Getting started

Using the Nginx server configs repo directly has a few required steps to be able to work.

Check `nginx.conf` settings

The first thing to check is that the nginx.conf file contains appropriate values for your specific install. The web user varies with distribution, in most cases compare to the config file originally present, and use the same user:

// /etc/nginx-original/nginx.conf
user www-data www-data;

Apply to the runtime config file:

// /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
#user www www;
user www-data-www-data;

Configure logs and pid file

The location of logs also varies from system to system. To account for this the nginx.conf file uses a relative path for logs:

// /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
error_log logs/error.log warn;

There are two options to configure this appropriately, change the path to point at the folder where logs should be stored:

// /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;

And:

// /etc/nginx/h5bp/expires.conf
access_log logs/static.log;

To:

// /etc/nginx/h5bp/expires.conf
access_log /var/log/nginx/static.log;

Or, setup a symlink to point at the right place:

cd /etc/nginx
ln -s /var/log/nginx logs

The location of the pid file should also be checked and corrected if necessary.

Creating a site definition

An example server definition is provided in sites-available/example.com. Copy the file to sites-available/yourdomainname.com and edit appropriately. Verify specifically that the hostname (example.com) and the root are specified correctly.

Enabling a site

Activate the new site by linking yourdomainname.com into the sites-enabled directory:

cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
ln -s ../sites-available/yourdomainname.com .

This will make the server active the next time nginx (re)starts.

Verify config and restart nginx

Verify the config and restart nginx to apply the changes.

To verify nginx config (Tests default nginx config file)

nginx -t

To verify a particular nginx config file

nginx -t -c nginx.conf

This will test the nginx config file and throws error if any. Otherwise test is successful and you can restart nginx.

Finally restart nginx to apply the changes

/etc/init.d/nginx restart

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