How to setup Nginx web server on Ubuntu V20
Hey people, caming with new topic and continuing server and proxy setup series. Today, I came with new topic that is Nginx server setup. Without waiting Lets come to the point.
Introduction
Apache and Nginx are two popular open-source web servers often used with PHP. Because Nginx is available in Ubuntu’s default repositories, it is possible to install it from these repositories using the apt packaging system. Lets start with server setup:
Step 1 — Installing Nginx
Using apt package manager install nginx package:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginxStep 2 — Adjusting the Firewall
Before testing Nginx, the firewall software needs to be adjusted to allow access to the service. Nginx registers itself as a service with ufw upon installation, making it straightforward to allow Nginx access.
List the application configurations that ufw knows how to work with by typing:
sudo ufw app list
Output ==>
Available application profiles:
Nginx Full
Nginx HTTP
Nginx HTTPS
OpenSSHenable required profile by typing and also verify the changes:
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
sudo ufw statusThe output will indicated which HTTP traffic is allowed:
Output
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Nginx HTTP ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Nginx HTTP (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)Step 3 — Checking your Web Server
At the end of the installation process, Ubuntu 20.04 starts Nginx. The web server should already be up and running.
We can check with the systemd init system to make sure the service is running by typing:
systemctl status nginxOutput
● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2020-04-20 16:08:19 UTC; 3 days ago
Docs: man:nginx(8)
Main PID: 2369 (nginx)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 1153)
Memory: 3.5M
CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
├─2369 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
└─2380 nginx: worker processNow you have successfully setup nginx server. Use your ip to use on browser or you can use domain name : icanhazip.com
http://your_server_ipYou should receive the default Nginx landing page:
If you are on this page, your server is running correctly and is ready to be managed.
Step 4 — Managing the Nginx Process
Now that you have your web server up and running, let’s review some basic management commands.
To start, stop, restart, reload, disable and enable your web server, type:
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl stop nginx
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl reload nginx
sudo systemctl disable nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginxStep 5 — Setting Up Server Blocks (Recommended)
Create the directory for your_domain as follows, using the -p flag to create any necessary parent directories:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/your_domain/htmlNext, assign ownership of the directory with the $USER environment variable:
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain/htmlThe permissions of your web roots should be correct if you haven’t modified your umask value, which sets default file permissions. To ensure that your permissions are correct and allow the owner to read, write, and execute the files while granting only read and execute permissions to groups and others, you can input the following command:
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/your_domainNext, create a sample index.html page using nano or your favorite editor:
sudo nano /var/www/your_domain/html/index.htmlInside, add the following sample HTML:
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to your_domain!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success! The your_domain server block is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>Save and close the file.
In order for Nginx to serve this content, it’s necessary to create a server block with the correct directives. Instead of modifying the default configuration file directly, let’s make a new one at /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domain:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domainPaste in the following configuration block, which is similar to the default, but updated for our new directory and domain name:
/etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domain —>
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/your_domain/html;
index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
server_name your_domain www.your_domain;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
}Next, let’s enable the file by creating a link from it to the sites-enabled directory, which Nginx reads from during startup:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domain /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/Two server blocks are now enabled and configured to respond to requests based on their listen and server_name directives (you can read more about how Nginx processes these directives here):
your_domain: Will respond to requests foryour_domainandwww.your_domain.default: Will respond to any requests on port 80 that do not match the other two blocks.
To avoid a possible hash bucket memory problem that can arise from adding additional server names, it is necessary to adjust a single value in the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file. Open the file:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.confopen file : /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and save the changes:
...
http {
...
server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
...
}
...Next, test to make sure that there are no syntax errors in any of your Nginx files if there is problem restart the server:
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginxNginx should now be serving your domain name. You can test this by navigating to http://your_domain, where you should see something like this:
Server Logs
/var/log/nginx/access.log: Every request to your web server is recorded in this log file unless Nginx is configured to do otherwise./var/log/nginx/error.log: Any Nginx errors will be recorded in this log.
Conclusion
Now that you have your web server installed, you have many options for the type of content to serve and the technologies you want to use to create a richer experience.
