How To Compile Nginx from Source on a CentOS 6.4 x64 VPS

Create a new VPS with your domain name. We will be using ‘example.com’ as the domain or you can use the server IP instead of the hostname.

You can login into the VPS with your password for your host.

ssh root@example.com

We have few pre-requisites to be installed to compile which include development libraries along with source code compilers.

yum -y install gcc gcc-c++ make zlib-devel pcre-devel openssl-devel

Lets first create a directory to store our source code:

mkdir -p src && cd src

Lets get the current nginx version number from http://nginx.org/en/download.html

Run the following commands to download the source.

nginxVersion="1.5.5"
wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-$nginxVersion.tar.gz
tar -xzf nginx-$nginxVersion.tar.gz 
ln -sf nginx-$nginxVersion nginx

We first want to prepare nginx with necessary basic options.

For a full list of options you can look at ./configure --help

These options are the basic variables which we override to use default system paths at /etc/ to ensure it works simliar when installed via rpm. The user and group option are used to run the nginx worker processes in non-privileged.

--user
--group
--prefix
--sbin-path
--conf-path
--pid-path
--lock-path
--error-log-path
--http-log-path

• --with-http_gzip_static_module option enables nginx to use gzip (Before serving a file from disk to a gzip-enabled client, this module will look for a precompressed file in the same location that ends in “.gz”. The purpose is to avoid compressing the same file each time it is requested.).[recommended for reducing size of information sent]

• --with-http_stub_status_module option enables other plugins over nginx to allow us to get the status (This module provides the ability to get some status from nginx.). [recommended for getting stats]

• --with-http_ssl_module - required if you want to run a HTTPS server. See How To Create a SSL Certificate on nginx for CentOS 6

• --with-pcre option enables to match routes via Regular Expression Matching when defining routes. [recommended, you will find more use of this once you start adding and matching routes]

• --with-file-aio - enables asynchronous I/O, better than the default send file option (recommended if you are allowing users to download static files)

• --with-http_realip_module is used for getting the IP of the client when behind a load balancer. This is useful when serving content behind CloudFlare like services.

• --without-http_scgi_module - Disable SCGI module (normally used when running CGI scripts)

• --without-http_uwsgi_module - Disable UWSGI module (normally used when running CGI scripts)

• --without-http_fastcgi_module - Disable FastCGI module (normally used when running CGI scripts)

cd nginx

./configure \
--user=nginx                          \
--group=nginx                         \
--prefix=/etc/nginx                   \
--sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx           \
--conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf     \
--pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid         \
--lock-path=/var/run/nginx.lock       \
--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \
--http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \
--with-http_gzip_static_module        \
--with-http_stub_status_module        \
--with-http_ssl_module                \
--with-pcre                           \
--with-file-aio                       \
--with-http_realip_module             \
--without-http_scgi_module            \
--without-http_uwsgi_module           \
--without-http_fastcgi_module

Once we are able to configure the source which even checks for additional requirements like the compiler(gcc, g++) which we installed in the pre-requisites step:

 make
 make install

1. Add the user nginx to the system. This is a one time command:

    useradd -r nginx
   

2. We need to setup the file /etc/init.d/nginx to run when system starts:

    #!/bin/sh
    #
    # nginx - this script starts and stops the nginx daemin
    #
    # chkconfig:   - 85 15
    # description:  Nginx is an HTTP(S) server, HTTP(S) reverse \
    #               proxy and IMAP/POP3 proxy server
    # processname: nginx
    # config:      /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    # pidfile:     /var/run/nginx.pid
    # user:        nginx
    
    # Source function library.
    . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
    
    # Source networking configuration.
    . /etc/sysconfig/network
    
    # Check that networking is up.
    [ "$NETWORKING" = "no" ] && exit 0
    
    nginx="/usr/sbin/nginx"
    prog=$(basename $nginx)
    
    NGINX_CONF_FILE="/etc/nginx/nginx.conf"
    
    lockfile=/var/run/nginx.lock
    
    start() {
        [ -x $nginx ] || exit 5
        [ -f $NGINX_CONF_FILE ] || exit 6
        echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
        daemon $nginx -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
        retval=$?
        echo
        [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile
        return $retval
    }
    
    stop() {
        echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
        killproc $prog -QUIT
        retval=$?
        echo
        [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile
        return $retval
    }
    
    restart() {
        configtest || return $?
        stop
        start
    }
    
    reload() {
        configtest || return $?
        echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
        killproc $nginx -HUP
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
    }
    
    force_reload() {
        restart
    }
    
    configtest() {
      $nginx -t -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
    }
    
    rh_status() {
        status $prog
    }
    
    rh_status_q() {
        rh_status >/dev/null 2>&1
    }
    
    case "$1" in
        start)
            rh_status_q && exit 0
            $1
            ;;
        stop)
            rh_status_q || exit 0
            $1
            ;;
        restart|configtest)
            $1
            ;;
        reload)
            rh_status_q || exit 7
            $1
            ;;
        force-reload)
            force_reload
            ;;
        status)
            rh_status
            ;;
        condrestart|try-restart)
            rh_status_q || exit 0
                ;;
        *)
            echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|condrestart|try-restart|reload|force-reload|configtest}"
            exit 2
    esac
   

   Optionally, you can obtain the source from:

    wget -O /etc/init.d/nginx https://gist.github.com/sairam/5892520/raw/b8195a71e944d46271c8a49f2717f70bcd04bf1a/etc-init.d-nginx
   

   This file should be made executable so that we can use it via ‘service nginx <command>’:

    chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
   

3. Set the service to start whenever the system boots:

    chkconfig --add nginx
    chkconfig --level 345 nginx on
   

4. Configure /etc/nginx/nginx.conf to set types_hash_bucket_size and server_names_hash_bucket_size which needs to be increased.

    http {
        include       mime.types;
        default_type  application/octet-stream;
    	# add the below 2 lines under http around line 20
        types_hash_bucket_size 64;
        server_names_hash_bucket_size 128;
   

5. Start the server. This will start the VPS on port 80.

    service nginx start
   

Visit example.com or your IP address in the browser. You will see:

Welcome to nginx!

Congratulations! Your brand new nginx server is up.