basic-nginx.md

Basic nginx

Create simple nginx config

Here is a simple config for a reverse proxy, it will take all requests coming to our server with a Host header example.com and proxy the to the local port 8080:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
  }
}

Standard place to add configs is /etc/nginx/sites-available

So we can create it like this:

vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com.conf

And copy the config from above!

Enabling config

After creating a config in /etc/nginx/sites-available folder we should create a symlink to it from /etc/nginx/sites-enabled, like this:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com.conf

This will allow us to disable config without deleting it completely, modifying, commenting out, etc.

Testing and reloading nginx

To test, run:

nginx -t

If everything is fine reload nginx using following command:

nginx -s reload