NGINX Configuration file [Not finished yet]

Summary

This is an introduction to NGINX configuration file.

• For NGINX installed by brew, you may find out nginx.conf in /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf.
• For NGINX on Linux, you may find out nginx.conf in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

Default NGINX conf file

Here’s the default NGINX conf file. You may cover your nginx.conf with default conf file in case you have messed up.

Be careful, we should always add a ; at the end of a phase.

#user  nobody;
#Defines which Linux system user will own and run the Nginx server

worker_processes  1;
#Referes to single threaded process. Generally set to be equal to the number of CPUs or cores.

#error_log  logs/error.log; #error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#Specifies the file where server logs. 

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;
#nginx will write its master process ID(PID).

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
    # worker_processes and worker_connections allows you to calculate maxclients value: 
    # max_clients = worker_processes * worker_connections
}


http {
    include       mime.types;
    # anything written in /opt/nginx/conf/mime.types is interpreted as if written inside the http { } block

    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    #

    #log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
    #                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
    #                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    #access_log  logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    # If serving locally stored static files, sendfile is essential to speed up the server,
    # But if using as reverse proxy one can deactivate it

    #tcp_nopush     on;
    # works opposite to tcp_nodelay. Instead of optimizing delays, it optimizes the amount of data sent at once.

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    # timeout during which a keep-alive client connection will stay open.

    #gzip  on;
    # tells the server to use on-the-fly gzip compression.

    server {
        # You would want to make a separate file with its own server block for each virtual domain
        # on your server and then include them.
        listen       80;
        #tells Nginx the hostname and the TCP port where it should listen for HTTP connections.
        # listen 80; is equivalent to listen *:80;

        server_name  localhost;
        # lets you doname-based virtual hosting

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

        location / {
            #The location setting lets you configure how nginx responds to requests for resources within the server.
            root   html;
            index  index.html index.htm;
        }

        #error_page  404              /404.html;

        # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
        #
        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }

        # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1;
        #}

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    root           html;
        #    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        #    fastcgi_index  index.php;
        #    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
        #    include        fastcgi_params;
        #}

        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        #location ~ /\.ht {
        #    deny  all;
        #}
    }


    # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       8000;
    #    listen       somename:8080;
    #    server_name  somename  alias  another.alias;

    #    location / {
    #        root   html;
    #        index  index.html index.htm;
    #    }
    #}


    # HTTPS server
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       443 ssl;
    #    server_name  localhost;

    #    ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
    #    ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

    #    ssl_session_cache    shared:SSL:1m;
    #    ssl_session_timeout  5m;

    #    ssl_ciphers  HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
    #    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers  on;

    #    location / {
    #        root   html;
    #        index  index.html index.htm;
    #    }
    #}

}

Explainations

• error_log

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

error_log indicates in which file NGINX should store its error log.

• pid

pid /run/nginx.pid;

pid indicates the pid of NGINX process so that you can run kill -QUIT `cat /run/nginx.pid` to send a QUIT signal to NGINX.

events

In events{ } block we have following configurations.

• worker_connections

worker_connections 1024;

worker_connections indicated how many connections can be opened at the same time.

Reference

• NGINX Doc