Nginx Configuration

Nginx is a proxy/load-balancer that also is able to serve static files (and is a good deal faster at it than mongrel). It’s more complicated to setup than pound, but results in a faster setup.

Getting Started

1. ssh in, create a new directory ‘nginx’ (this can be placed anywhere you like, but for purposes of example I’m putting it in the home directory – /var/www/virtual/example.com/ – your home dirƒctory may look completely different)

2. Create ~/nginx plus two subdirectories ~/nginx/log and ~/nginx/tmp this can be conveniently done with a single command.

$ mkdir -p nginx/{tmp,logs}

3. Create a file nginx.conf, placed in ~/etc (create etc if it doesn’t exist). Here’s a sample nginx.conf (be sure to replace all instances of /var/www/virtual/example.com with the path to your home directory, as well as all port numbers and such as mentioned in the comments):

worker_processes  1;

pid /var/www/virtual/example.com/nginx/tmp/nginx.pid;

# Valid error reporting levels are debug, notice and info
error_log  /var/www/virtual/example.com/nginx/logs/error.log debug; 

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
  access_log /var/www/virtual/example.com/nginx/logs/access.log;

  fastcgi_temp_path /var/www/virtual/example.com/nginx/tmp/fcgi_temp;
  client_body_temp_path  /var/www/virtual/example.com/nginx/tmp/client_body 1 2;
  proxy_temp_path /var/www/virtual/example.com/nginx/tmp/proxy_temp;

  include       conf/mime.types;
  default_type  application/octet-stream;

  sendfile        on;

  tcp_nopush     on;
  keepalive_timeout  65;
  tcp_nodelay        on;

  gzip  on;
  gzip_min_length  1100;
  gzip_buffers     4 8k;
  gzip_types       text/plain text/html text/xhtml text/css text/js;

  upstream mongrel {
    #### Replace these with the ports for your mongrel cluster: 
    server 127.0.0.1:10000;
    server 127.0.0.1:10001;
  }

  server {
    #### Replace with your nginx/pound port and domain name: 
    # Example port numbers (for vu2123): (8xxx, 1xxx0, 1xxx1) => (8123, 11230, 11231)
    #

    listen       127.0.0.1:8100;  # 8100 = vu2100
    server_name  example.com;

    #### Replace with the full path to your rails app's public directory: 
    root /var/www/virtual/example.com/rails/railsapp/public;
    index  index.html index.htm;

    location / {

      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;
      proxy_redirect false;
      if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
        rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
      }

      if (-f $request_filename.html) {
        rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
      }

      if (!-f $request_filename) {
        proxy_pass http://mongrel;
        break;
      }
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   html;
    }
  }
}

4. Start nginx