Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server, Third Edition

By : Clement Nedelcu
Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server, Third Edition

By: Clement Nedelcu

Overview of this book

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free, open source solution will either come as a full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed. This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes. This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Nginx HTTP Server Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Base module directives


In this section, we will take a closer look at the base modules. We are particularly interested in answering two questions: what are base modules? What are the directives that are available?

What are base modules?

The base modules offer directives that allow you to define the parameters of the basic functionality of Nginx. They cannot be disabled at compile time, and as a result, the directives and blocks that they offer are always available. Three base modules have been distinguished:

  • Core module: Consists of essential features and directives such as process management and security

  • Events module: Lets you configure the inner mechanisms of the networking capabilities

  • Configuration module: Enables the inclusion mechanism

These modules offer a large range of directives; we will be detailing them individually with their syntaxes and default values.

The Nginx process architecture

Before we start detailing the basic configuration directives, it is necessary to understand the...