This instruction describes how to use nginx as reverse proxy for apache, also I'll show some tips how use nginx for heavy loaded sites.
Majority of my servers are freebsd boxes, so this howto oriented on freebsd, but I'll show some tips for linux too.
Nginx is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy.
It extremely fast HTTP server, really! It can serve many thousand concurrent connections!
http://nginx.net/
http://wiki.codemongers.com/
Using nginx as reverse proxy for apache.
==========================================
For understanding how this works please see:
http://blog.kovyrin.net/2006/05/18/nginx-as-reverse-proxy/lang/en
Using reverse proxy(nginx) behind big web server(apache) is classic two-layer web server architecture ( frontend + backend web servers)
Most advantages is that small frontend can wait very long time while client will receive his content and will close connection - backend server will not consume resources for such long time.
In advanced configurations nginx runs behind your big web server and handle all requests to static content and to pass all dynamic requests to primary web-server. With this solution your big server will spawn additional threads/processes only for dynamic pages and it will return answers to small frontend very fast and then can free resources to use them to handle another queries.
Lets go.
NOTE: Any changes in apache configuration are not required !!
If your backend scripts are using user IP addresses for some purposes, you will need to install mod_rpaf (apache2) or mod_realip(apache1) module to use X-Real-IP header provided by nginx.
1) installing nginx:
Code:
freebsd # make install clean -C /usr/ports/www/nginxoptinos:
Code:
freebsd # less /var/db/ports/nginx/options
# This file is auto-generated by 'make config'.
# No user-servicable parts inside!
# Options for nginx-0.6.31
_OPTIONS_READ=nginx-0.6.31
WITHOUT_DEBUG=true
WITHOUT_GOOGLE_PERFTOOLS=true
WITH_HTTP_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_HTTP_ADDITION_MODULE=true
WITH_HTTP_DAV_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_HTTP_FLV_MODULE=true
WITH_HTTP_PERL_MODULE=true
WITH_HTTP_REALIP_MODULE=true
WITH_HTTP_REWRITE_MODULE=true
WITH_HTTP_SSL_MODULE=true
WITH_HTTP_STATUS_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_HTTP_SUB_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_MAIL_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_MAIL_IMAP_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_MAIL_POP3_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_MAIL_SMTP_MODULE=true
WITHOUT_MAIL_SSL_MODULE=true
WITH_WWW=truefor linux you can install nginx using packet manager
# apt-get install nginx # or get nginx sources and build package
# yum install nginx
also you can compile nginx from sources as described here:
http://directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20133
2) configuring nginx
In freebsd nginx configs are installed into /usr/local/etc/nginx/
Here is my simplified nginx.conf but I strongly reccomended also see default config.
Code:
# /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
user www apache;
worker_processes 2; # how many processors or how many hard disks you have
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
events {
worker_connections 8192;
}
http {
include mime.types;
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;
tcp_nopush on;
keepalive_timeout 75 20;
gzip on;
server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
reset_timedout_connection on;
client_max_body_size 100m;
#------------------
#fullproxy for all
server {
listen _SERVERIP_:81 default rcvbuf=8192 sndbuf=16384 backlog=32000 accept_filter=httpready;
server_name _DEFAULTDOMAIN_ _ ; # "_" is for handle all hosts that are not described by server_name
charset off;
access_log off;
#access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/local/www/nginx-dist;
}
location / {
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_pass http://_SERVERIP_; # apache here
client_max_body_size 16m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_buffering off;
#proxy_buffering on;
proxy_connect_timeout 90;
proxy_send_timeout 90;
proxy_read_timeout 120;
#proxy_buffer_size 8k;
#proxy_buffers 32 32k;
#proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
#proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
error_page 502 503 /usr/local/www/nginx-dist/50x.html;
}
location /nginx_status {
stub_status on;
access_log off;
allow _STUFFIP_;
allow _SERVERIP_;
allow 127.0.0.1;
deny all;
}
}
#---------------------------
# Heavy loaded virtualhosts
#---------------------------
include /usr/local/etc/nginx/vhosts/*.conf; # this is optional
}some comments:
proxy_buffering is very efficient, but I have some troubles, when clients requested lage files (600mb for example), apache tried sent them to nginx as fast as he can, and nginx tried receive this files from apache....and this caused some overload. So I turn this feature off. But anyway try end test it!
nginx_status is feature like apache httpd_status, optional.
Attention! You should replase _SERVERIP_ _STUFFIP_ _DEFAULTDOMAIN_ to you own.
Also you should create /var/log/nginx and /usr/local/etc/nginx/vhosts if you dont have this dirs.
Also add ' nginx_enable="YES" ' to rc.conf.
Every time when we change nginx configuration run `nginx -t` to test config:
Code:
#nginx -t
2008/08/13 10:15:40 [info] 75959#0: the configuration file /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
2008/08/13 10:15:40 [info] 75959#0: the configuration file /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf was tested successfullyAll ok, now you could start nginx:
Code:
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/nginx startAfter this nginx should listen 81 port
Code:
freebsd # sockstat -4l | grep 81
linux # netstat -ntpl |grep 81Now, you even cat to test nginx, connecting to
http://your_sample_domain:81
and should see you sample_domain
.Fine!
3) Logrotating:
#FreeBSD:
Code:
# newsyslog.conf
/var/log/nginx/*.log root:wheel 640 7 * @T00 GJ /var/run/nginx.pid 30# linux:
Code:
#vi /etc/logrotate.d/nginx
/usr/local/nginx/logs/*.log {
daily
missingok
rotate 9
compress
delaycompress
notifempty
postrotate
kill -USR1 `cat /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid`
endscript
}4) configuring apache
As I said early you should have
mod_rpaf (for apache2) or mod_realip(for apache1).
Code:
freebsd # make install clean -C /usr/ports/www/mod_realip
or freebsd # make install clean -C /usr/ports/www/mod_rpaf2Else, follow this instructions:
mod_rpaf: http://stderr.net/apache/rpaf/
mod_realip:
download module:
wget http://sysoev.ru/mod_realip/mod_realip-2.0.tar.gz
unpack and compile it:
# apxs -i -a -c path_to/mod_realip.c
then copy builded mod_realip.so to dir where are your other apache modules.
Then you need add this to httpd.conf:
Code:
<IfModule mod_realip.c>
RealIP localhost xfwd
RealIP _SERVERIP_ xfwd
</IfModule>That all! just restart apache.
5) Putting nginx and apache working together
After you have successfully tested some domains on http://exampledomain:81 it is time to make nginx handling request from users.
I'm using pf firewall on freebsd, so simple redirect here:
Code:
# requests via ngnix
rdr on $ext_if proto tcp from any to $me port 80 -> $me port 81Now all request coming to server are redirected to nginx to port 81, than nginx handle it and pass to backend server apache.
If you have linux, use iptables forwarding:
Code:
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -s ! _SERVERIP_ --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 81if you will need to turn off nginx for some reasone, you could simply delete this iptables rule, and all requests will come to apache.
That is all
Enjoy.Here some my freebsd graphics from mrtg after starting nginx.
Loadaverage:
Memory:
6) Optional 1: improvements of handling requests for heavy loaded domains.
For example you have some big domains that have many static files and uniq hosts.
So you want to put nginx serving requests to static files on this domain directly.
Create config for you domain and put it into /usr/local/etc/nginx/vhosts:
Code:
# less /usr/local/etc/nginx/vhosts/heavyloadeddomain.conf
#
server {
listen _SERVERIP_:81;
server_name _HEAVYLOADEDDOMAIN_ www._HEAVYLOADEDDOMAIN_;
charset off;
access_log /var/log/nginx/_HEAVYLOADEDDOMAIN_.access.log main;
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/local/www/nginx-dist;
}
# proxy the PHP scripts to Apache
location / {
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_pass http://217.20.175.140;
proxy_buffering off;
error_page 502 503 /usr/local/www/nginx-dist/50x.html;
}
#static files
location ~* ^.+.(nrg|htm|html|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|7z|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|js|avi|mp3|mp4|mpg|iso|djvu|dmg|flac|r70|mdf|chm|sisx|sis|flv|thm|bin)$ {
root /home/_USER_/domains/_HEAVYLOADEDDOMAIN_/public_html/;
}
}test nginx: nginx -t
and reload them.
Now nginx serving static files for this domain directly!
7) Optional 2: improvements of handling requests for heavy loaded domains.
If you have very very busy domain, you may want completely turn off apache.
In this case you should proxy all php request to php-fastcgi server.
It's described in this howto: http://directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20133
where php-fastcgi server statrs using lighttpd spawn manager.
I recomended php-fpm as fasctcgi server. Today it is most advansed PHP fastcgi process manager. Please see http://php-fpm.anight.org/
for freebsd you could download port from my site: http://paix.org.ua/sk/php5_fpm_526.tar.gz
small instruction here: http://paix.org.ua/node/11 (sorry, but only on russian)
So, in case of such setup you should have config like this:
# less /usr/local/etc/nginx/vhosts/heaveloadeddomain2.conf
Code:
server {
listen _SERVERIP_:81;
server_name ${domainame} www.${domainame};
access_log /var/log/nginx/${domainame}.access.log main;
location / {
root /home/vhosts/${domainame}/public_html;
index index.html index.php;
}
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/local/www/nginx-dist;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
#fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:1026; # connect to php-fastcgi sever via tcp port
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php-fpm/${domainame}.sock; # connect to php-fastcgi sever via unix socket. I preffer this way.
root /home/vhosts/${domainame}/public_html;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}Now you have very strong setup! Enjoy!
