Nginx common configuration

Nginx common Configuration

This is the blog how to configure a nginx web server. It covers most important configurations, their meanings and the recommender values.

CORE module configuration:

This section of configurations apply to the core (global) nginx module.

user  [user-id];

This configuration item is to specify what OS user the nginx worker process is running. Usually you should specify a separated user just for running nginx, usually it is an none-login user for security concern. eg. user nginx;

worker_processes [number];

this is for the number of worker_processes; for a multiple CPU/core system, it should be configure to be equal to the number of CPUs or cores. If the web server serves the static pages and needs lots of IO, the number should be increased as when the thread/process will be blocked and you need more process/thread to serve new requests.

the picture shows how the processes look like when configured as
user nginx;
worker_processes 2;

worker_cpu_affinity cpumask;

the configuration is worked with the worker_processes configuration item. This is combined the work processes to the sepeicfied CPU, this affinity ability is just used for the SMP architecture, not suitable for hyper-threading.

eg. worker_cpu_affinity 0001 0010 0100 1010. the above configuration combine the first process to CPU1, second to CPU2, third to CPU3, forth to CPU2/CPU4.

pid        logs/nginx.pid;

stores the pid number for the nginx master process

you can use the command # kill `cat $NGINX_HOME/logs/nginx.pid` to stop the nginx.

Events module

This section is used for the events

worker_connections [number]:

it defines how many connections a worker process can accept. Usually 1024 is a good value for a normal load system.

use [select|epoll|etc]

it defines what the multiple threading module, in linux system, usually epoll is a good choice and in windows, it can only use select.

HTTP module

http module is the essential configuration of a nginx web server. It defines the http server and its’ virtual hosts.

[TBC]