How To Install Nginx In Ubuntu

Introduction to Nginx

Nginx is a very powerful web server for hosting websites and applications. It is a fast and reliable server, and is one of the most popular web servers available on the internet today. Nginx is highly scalable, allowing you to easily expand your services to serve more customers or applications.

Nginx has become popular thanks to its ability to handle high-volume traffic efficiently and securely. Nginx is also open-source and free, so you can use it for any type of project without worrying about licensing costs.

Installing Nginx on Ubuntu

Installing Nginx on Ubuntu is a simple process. You’ll need to install the nginx package from the Ubuntu software repository. To do this, open a command line and type:

sudo apt-get -y install nginx

This will install Nginx, along with any dependencies it needs. Once the installation is complete, you can start the Nginx service.

To start the Nginx service, type the following command:

sudo service nginx start

This will start the Nginx service. It will listen on port 80 by default. You can open a web browser and go to http://localhost to check if Nginx is running.

Creating a Virtual Host

A virtual host is a mapping between a domain name and an IP address. It allows us to host multiple websites on a single server. In order to create a virtualhost, we need to create a new configuration file inside /etc/nginx/sites-available . This file will contain the information about the virtual host.

For example, if we want to create a virtual host for example.com, we will create the following file:

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

Now we can add the configuration to this file. For example, the following is a sample configuration for the virtual host example.com:

server {

listen 80;

server_name example.com;

root /var/www/example.com;

index index.html index.htm;

}

This configuration tells Nginx to listen on port 80, respond to requests for example.com, and serve files from the directory /var/www/example.com. The index line specifies the files that should be served when a user visits the URL (e.g. http://example.com).

Once we have added the configuration, we need to enable the virtual host. To do this, we need to create a symlink from the sites-available directory to the sites-enabled directory:

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

This will create a symlink from the sites-available directory to the sites-enabled directory, which will enable the virtualhost.

Finally, we need to reload the Nginx configuration. To do this, we need to restart the Nginx service:

sudo service nginx restart

This will reload the Nginx configuration and our virtualhost should now be working.

Configuring SSL

We can configure Nginx to use SSL to secure our website and improve our security. We can do this by generating a self-signed certificate for our website. To generate a self-signed certificate, we need to use the openssl command.

First, we need to generate a private key. We can do this by typing the following command:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 2048

This will generate a 2048-bit RSA key. Once the key is generated, we need to generate a certificate signing request (CSR). We can do this by typing the following command:

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

This will generate a CSR. Once the CSR is generated, we need to sign it with our private key. We can do this by typing the following command:

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

This will generate a self-signed certificate valid for 365 days. Now we can configure Nginx to use the certificate. To do this, we need to add the following lines to our virtual host configuration:

ssl on;

ssl_certificate /path/to/server.crt;

ssl_certificate_key /path/to/server.key;

This will enable SSL on the virtual host and use the self-signed certificate we generated earlier.

Managing Nginx

Nginx is managed using the nginx command. This command can be used to start, stop, reload, or get the status of the Nginx service.

To start the Nginx service, we can use the following command:

sudo service nginx start

To stop the Nginx service, we can use the following command:

sudo service nginx stop

To reload the Nginx configuration, we can use the following command:

sudo service nginx reload

To get the status of the Nginx service, we can use the following command:

sudo service nginx status

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have covered the basics of installing and configuring Nginx on Ubuntu. We have also seen how to create virtual hosts and enable SSL. With a few simple commands, we can quickly get a powerful web server up and running.

FAQs

Q: Is Nginx free to use?

A: Yes, Nginx is an open-source and free software, so you can use it for any type of project without worrying about licensing costs.

Q: Does Nginx support SSL?

A: Yes, Nginx supports SSL and it is easy to configure. You can follow the steps outlined in this tutorial to enable SSL on your Nginx web server.

Q: Is Nginx easy to use?

A: Yes, Nginx is easy to install and configure. You can use the nginx command to manage the Nginx service, and the configuration files make it easy to customize Nginx for your specific needs.

Q: Is Nginx scalable?

A: Yes, Nginx is highly scalable. It is designed to handle large amounts of traffic and can easily be expanded to serve more customers or applications.

Thank you for reading this article. Please read our other articles to know more about Ubuntu, Nginx, and more.