NGINX Installation on Windows 07 / RHEL 5.x

NGINX is better for high-traffic sites due to its event-driven architecture. Rather than handling each request in a distinct thread, it uses non-blocking I/O to service many requests in each thread.

In advanced configurations NGINX runs behind your big web server and handle all requests to static content and to pass all dynamic requests to primary web-server. With this solution your big server will spawn additional threads/processes only for dynamic pages and it will return answers to small frontend very fast and then can free resources to use them to handle another query.

It is not only useful to have NGINX serve static images, but having NGINX proxy to Apache is a big win as well. This is because slow clients cause Apache to keep threads busy for longer than needed. NGINX can deal with the slow client and allow Apache to finish the request as fast as possible, freeing the thread (and memory) for other requests. NGINX will accept the request as fast as your local connection will allow, and trickle the response back to the slow client.

Many people find that running NGINX as a proxy in front of Apache to be an ideal middle ground. NGINX talks to the slow clients and can do so using a very small amount of RAM. When requests are forwarded to Apache, the request speed is limited by your local connectivity, not that of the remote user. This means that the network bottleneck will not keep the request (and its memory-hogging thread) alive for any longer than necessary.

In short you get the low-resource benefits of NGINX coupled with the wide feature-set of Apache.

Installing NGINX On Windows 07.

• Download NGINX from following link: http://wiki.nginx.org/Install
• Extract downloaded zip, rename to ‘nginx’ and paste under C drive. 
• Open “C:/nginx/” right click on “nginx.exe” file and choose properties. Go to “Compatibility” tab and check “Run this program as administrator” option and click apply button.

Installing NGINX On RHEL 5.x.

• Download NGINX from following link: http://wiki.nginx.org/Install
• Extract downloaded zip to /home/[user]/
• Navigate to /home/[user]/nginx-1.4.4/ and run the following command in a terminal window. ./configure && make && make install
• However, one disadvantage of installing from source is that init scripts are not created. So, we need to create one for easy control of NGINX and to ensure it restarts on a reboot. If you have placed the NGINX binary in a directory other than ‘/usr/local/nginx/sbin’ then you will need to adjust the script shown below to match your installation.
• If you have NGINX running then stop the process using: kill `cat /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid’
• Create a file with name 'nginx' and copy following script to the file.

  !/bin/sh # nginx - this script starts and stops the nginx daemin . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions . /etc/sysconfig/network # Check that networking is up. [ "$NETWORKING" = "no" ] && exit 0 nginx="/usr/local/sbin/nginx" prog=$(basename $nginx) NGINX_CONF_FILE="/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf" lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/nginx start() {     [ -x $nginx ] || exit 5     [ -f $NGINX_CONF_FILE ] || exit 6     echo -n $"Starting $prog: "     daemon $nginx -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE     retval=$?     echo     [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile     return $retval } stop() {     echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "     killproc $prog -QUIT     retval=$?     echo     [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile     return $retval } restart() {     configtest || return $?     stop     start } reload() {     configtest || return $?     echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "     killproc $nginx -HUP     RETVAL=$?     echo } force_reload() {     restart } configtest() {     $nginx -t -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE } rh_status() {     status $prog } rh_status_q() {     rh_status >/dev/null 2>&1 } case "$1" in     start)         rh_status_q && exit 0         $1         ;;     stop)     rh_status_q || exit 0         $1         ;;     restart|configtest)         $1         ;;     reload)         rh_status_q || exit 7         $1         ;;     force-reload)         force_reload         ;;     status)         rh_status         ;;     condrestart|try-restart)         rh_status_q || exit 0         ;; *) echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|condrestart|try-restart|reload|force-reload|configtest}" exit 2 esac

• As the init file is a shell script, it needs to have executable permissions: chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
• Let's check our work to confirm:

  sudo /sbin/chkconfig --list nginx
  nginx           0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
  The script will now be called on a reboot so Nginx will automatically start. 

.  
Running NGINX On Windows 07.

• start nginx                   #start server
• nginx -s stop                #fast shutdown
• nginx -s quit                #graceful shutdown
• nginx -s reload                        #reload the configuration file
• nginx -s reopen            #re-opening log file

You will probably get a popup to allow the service in Windows Firewall, accept it. Then head to http://127.0.0.0:80 and you should see a welcome page for nginx


Running NGINX On RHEL 5.x.

•  /etc/init.d/nginx start
• /etc/init.d/nginx stop
• /etc/init.d/nginx restart
• /etc/init.d/nginx reloa
• /etc/init.d/nginx reloa
• /etc/init.d/nginx configtes

OR

• service nginx star
• service nginx sto
• service nginx restart
• service nginx reloa
• service nginx status
• service nginx configtest

Open error log “C:/nginx/logs/error.log”. If you have the following error, this means port 80 is already in use. Possibly by Apache that is running on your computer.

bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (10013: An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions).

To resolve this go to “…../nginx/conf/nginx.conf” and look for: “listen 80;”. Change the port number to something like 88. Save and close. Now try to start NGINX again.