I have been using Apache 2 as my web server for more than a year now, but I still don't understand how to set it up. I'm not sure if I'm just too slow for Apache 2 or its documentation just lack the details. When I started using Nginx, I thought I never come back to Apache 2 anymore. And, it's really true. Nginx is a lot better to understand and it just took me some time to set-up and configure my server again.
What I will show is how I pass proxy my Gitblit and Nexus applications.
Ngix Location Patterns
Before I show you how I pass proxy my applications, please read the following excerpts from Nginx documentation site.
location = / {
# matches the query / only.
[ configuration A ]
}
location / {
# matches any query, since all queries begin with /, but regular
# expressions and any longer conventional blocks will be
# matched first.
[ configuration B ]
}
location /documents/ {
# matches any query beginning with /documents/ and continues searching,
# so regular expressions will be checked. This will be matched only if
# regular expressions don't find a match.
[ configuration C ]
}
location ^~ /images/ {
# matches any query beginning with /images/ and halts searching,
# so regular expressions will not be checked.
[ configuration D ]
}
location ~* \.(gif|jpg|jpeg)$ {
# matches any request ending in gif, jpg, or jpeg. However, all
# requests to the /images/ directory will be handled by
# Configuration D.
[ configuration E ]
}
You may read this part at http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpCoreModule.
Nginx Configuration Folders
I'm using Linux so my installation of Nginx might be a little different with that of Windows. But anyways, the way to configure Nginx must still be the same. The following is the content of the Nginx configuration folder (/etc/nginx).
total 80
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Nov 12 06:24 ./
drwxr-xr-x 131 root root 12288 Nov 24 00:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 10 2013 conf.d/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 898 Apr 29 2013 fastcgi_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2258 Apr 29 2013 koi-utf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1805 Apr 29 2013 koi-win
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2085 Apr 29 2013 mime.types
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5287 Apr 29 2013 naxsi_core.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 287 Apr 29 2013 naxsi.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 222 Apr 29 2013 naxsi-ui.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1644 Nov 27 08:03 nginx.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 131 Apr 29 2013 proxy_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 465 Apr 29 2013 scgi_params
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 26 23:48 sites-available/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 24 00:27 sites-enabled/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 532 Apr 29 2013 uwsgi_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3071 Apr 29 2013 win-utf
The main configuration file here is nginx.conf. If you open this file, you will find a few configuration blocks, but will focus on the HTTP configuration since we are talking about web application here. Note that Nginx can also pass proxy other stuff like SMTP.
http {
##
# Basic Settings
##
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
# server_tokens off;
# server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
# server_name_in_redirect off;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
##
# Logging Settings
##
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
##
# Gzip Settings
##
gzip on;
gzip_disable "msie6";
# gzip_vary on;
# gzip_proxied any;
# gzip_comp_level 6;
# gzip_buffers 16 8k;
# gzip_http_version 1.1;
# gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-
# javascript text/xml ap$
##
# nginx-naxsi config
##
# Uncomment it if you installed nginx-naxsi
##
#include /etc/nginx/naxsi_core.rules;
##
# nginx-passenger config
##
# Uncomment it if you installed nginx-passenger
##
#passenger_root /usr;
#passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby;
##
# Virtual Host Configs
##
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
Notice the last line with the keyword include. This statement says that it will include some configuration from configuration files under the folder /etc/nginx/sites-enabled.
Initially after installing Nginx, you will find a file named default under /etc/nginx/sites-enabled. This file contains server block configuration like the following:
server {
listen 80;
server_name my.server.com
location / {
root 8/usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}
By calling include in nginx.conf, the effective configuration will be something like the following:
http {
...
...
server {
listen 80;
server_name my.server.com
location / {
root 8/usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}
}
For my purpose, I have removed the default file and created my own configuration file. I created myserver configuration file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled and here are the contents:
server {
listen 80;
server_name my.server.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://myserver.azurewebsites.net;
}
location ^~ /gitblit/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:18080;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
}
location ^~ /nexus/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:18090;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
}
location ^~ /application3/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:18600;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
}
location ^~ /application4/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:18700;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
}
}
I have about six location blocks. All of these points to the respective Jetty server instances that I have created some weeks ago, except for one. The root / points to the Windows Azure website that I have recently created. I separate this application for some purpose that I will not mention here. All will be accessed via Nginx or via port 80.
That's all. I hope you get something from here.
Thanks for reading.
