Comments on: Replacing Apache with nginx for static file serving

By: Jeff Waugh

Jeff Waugh — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:59:33 +0000

Yep, running nginx everywhere. I don’t even have use cases that require Apache behind it anymore. Hooray!

For CGI scripts, I proxy to boa.

Thanks.

By: Jordi

Jordi — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:05:56 +0000

Ahoy Jeff!

I was playing with rrdtool for nginx today, and got reminded of this blog post.

I was wondering, how far has nginx penetrated in your infrastructure. Ie, are still running the monster? I probably already told you by some other means, but fcgiwrap is in Debian squeeze and latest Ubuntus, and I’m running pyblosxom’s CGI (for now, not using a WSGI wrapper) just using that and nginx.

# Pass blog CGI requests to fcgiwrap location /blog/ { # Disable gzip (it makes scripts feel slower since they # have to complete before getting gzipped) gzip off;


        # Set the root to /srv/oskuro.net (inside this location, this means

        # that we are giving access to the files under /srv/oskuro.net/cgi-bin)

        root /srv/oskuro.net/cgi-bin;
        # Include standar fastcgi parametres

        include fastcgi_params;
        # fcgiwrap's socket

        fastcgi_pass   unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;

# Set SCRIPT_FILENAME to the requested script fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /srv/oskuro.net/cgi-bin$fastcgi_script_name; }

For Mailman, that would be something like:

location /mailman { # Disable gzip (it makes scripts feel slower since they have to # complete before getting gzipped) gzip off;


        # Set the root to /usr/lib/cgi-bin (inside this location this

        # means that we are giving access to the files under

        # /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman)

        root    /usr/lib/cgi-bin;
        # Fastcgi socket

        fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;

# Fastcgi parameters, include the standard ones include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; # Adjust non standard parameters (SCRIPT_FILENAME) fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/lib/cgi-bin$fastcgi_script_name;

And a suitable alias directive to handle /usr/share/images/mailman.

HTH!

Jordi

By: stuartm

stuartm — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:59:53 +0000

Thanks Jeff, I’ll send you an email with more details, but what I did was set up Apache to listen on port 80 on the localhost, and nginx listened on port 80 on the real IP address.

By: Jeff Waugh

Jeff Waugh — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:10:29 +0000

@stuartm: Thanks — I did make the flight on time, but it did not get in to Sydney in time for my second flight.

So, first thing to do is change the address and port your Apache listens on and that your NameVirtualHosts are attached to. Just change them all to, say, 127.0.0.1:9000.

Then in nginx, you proxy_pass to Apache (either with http://127.0.0.1:9000 in the proxy_pass directive, or within an upstream group — which you might find handy).

Or were you struggling with other parts of the equation?

(Might be best to email me rather than go back and forth in the comments here — I can blog a little tute based on your questions if it ends up being generally useful!)

By: stuartm

stuartm — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:01:35 +0000

Hey Jeff – enjoyed your session today at WordCampNZ, hope you made your flight in time. I was the one who asked the question about whether it’s possible to run Nginx and Apache on the same host. I’m now looking for info on how to get this set up, but am struggling to find instructions for this specific use case. Most of the tutorials I’ve found deal with using Nginx as a web server by itself, or using solely as a reverse-proxy. Are you able to provide some more details on how you got it working with Apache?

By: Jordi

Jordi — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:00:27 +0000

Jeff, it’s a CGI wrapper written in C, which you hook to nginx as a proxy_pass to deal with your CGIs. Just ping me whenever you want to have a look, as I won’t upload to Debian just yet due to improper licence declaration in the upstream code.

By: Ben Lisle

Ben Lisle — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:10:18 +0000

JW – I kind of disliked having to backport to Lenny before it was even released.

Really loving the JEOS Ubuntu has though. Rocking stuff.

By: Jeff Waugh

Jeff Waugh — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:57:50 +0000

@Ben Lisle: Still loving Ubuntu… been using it as a server ages before they slapped the label on it. It’s just a pretty Debian with a release schedule.

By: Ben Lisle

Ben Lisle — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:46:43 +0000

JW – Ubuntu user I am guessing? I see they have a server version!

CS – Yep. Always handy to keep track on those who know more than you!

By: Lindsay Holmwood

Lindsay Holmwood — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:31:08 +0000

collectd ftw!