Tim Dupree

I have been using a relatively new HTTP server called nginx (pronounced “engine-x”) on a project and have been pretty impressed with it.  Despite the original documentation being in Russian, the English documentation is getting better and we are beginning to see a lot more resources popping up to help people with nginx.

Here are some resources you might find helpful in getting your nginx server up and running…

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Official Stuff:

Official nginx website: http://nginx.net/

Official nginx English wiki: http://wiki.nginx.org/Main

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Installing nginx on Ubuntu Intrepid:

Install it really quick  - Install nginx using aptitude package manager

or

Install it from source (giving you much greater control) - Install nginx from source

When installing from source, make sure you look over the install options.  You may want to configure nginx to support https, mail proxy, or sha1 (–with-http_ssl_module, –with-mail, –with-sha1=DIR). Check it out here: Nginx Compile-time Options

If you installed from source, make the init scripts to start nginx on reboot: Nginx init scripts

now that you have installed nginx, you will need to…

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Configure nginx (modifying the nginx.config file)

This link is more usefull if you installed nginx using the aptitude package manager.  If you installed from source, you will just have to keep your eye out or differences in paths etc.: Slicehost nginx.config tutorial

Learn about all the modules in your nginx.config file: Nginx Modules

More advanced configuration examples: Nginx Configuration Examples

Once you have nginx running you will probably want to get MySQL and PHP running as well so you can actually do something.

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MySQL, PHP5, FastCGI, and other goodies

Between the following articles and Googling here and there, you should be able to get MySQL, PHP5, FastCGI, Ruby on Rails, etc up and running alongside nginx.

Tutorial 1 - nginx, MySQL, PHP5, and FastCGI

Tutorial 2 - nginx, MySQL, PHP5, FastCGI, Ruby on Rails, and Rewrite

Tutorial 3 - nginx, MySQL, PHP5, PHP-fpm, and Ruby

Tutorial 4 - nginx and PHP5

Turorial 5 - nginx, PHP5, and xcache

Tutorial 6 - nginx, MySQL, PHP5, and FastCGI

Tutorial 7 - nginx, PHP5, FastCGI, and xcache

Tutorial 8 - nginx, PHP, FastCGI, APC

I also found the slicehost forum to be of help as well: Slicehost forum

Update (04/13/2009): nginx “how to” by calomel.org.  This has a lot of great information and explains things very clearly. It also goes over setting up https with a GoDaddy SSL cert.

Good luck!