Configure nginx as front-end web server

I’ve been using lighttpd for a long time, it’s faster and stable. But 1.4.x series of lighttpd lacks some features I need: powerful proxy mod, dav_svn mod, real IP extract (as mod_extract_forwarded in apache).

Most of the bandwidth of feuvan.net is contributed to a web game proxy using proxy mod of lighttpd 1.4.13 : http://chaoswar.feuvan.net (official: http://alpha.chaoswar.cn:8080 ), the lighttpd causes many TIME_WAIT connections in high load condition. Therefore, I want to use a powerful proxy like squid to do the proxy work. nginx ( Engine X ) is my selection. Squid is too heavy ;-).

It’s easy to install in debian, just type aptitude install nginx as root. Then I changed lighttpd listening port to localhost:81, and configure nginx to run on 0.0.0.0:80.

nginx.conf:

user www-data;
worker_processes 1;

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections 4096;
    use epoll;
}

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;

    sendfile        on;
    tcp_nopush     on;

    keepalive_timeout 35;
    tcp_nodelay        on;

    gzip on;

    server {
        listen       80;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:81;
            include         /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
        }

    }

    upstream chaoswar_cn {
        server alpha.chaoswar.cn:8080;
    }
    server {
        listen          80;
        server_name     chaoswar.feuvan.net;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://chaoswar_cn;
            include         /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
        }
    }
}

proxy.conf:

proxy_redirect          off;
proxy_set_header        Host $host;
proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size    10m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_connect_timeout   30;
proxy_send_timeout      30;
proxy_read_timeout      30;
proxy_buffer_size       4k;
proxy_buffers           4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;

The most content of configure files are copied from nginx wiki, it’s easy to read. And may be I can do more optimizations like static content (picuture) cache ( expire 30d?). But the main purpose of this article is to show you a general whole picture of the proxy function of Nginx.

BTW, nginx is not just a light-weight squid like proxy server! It’s also a HTTP/MAIL Server.

Anyway, I’m still waiting for 1.5.0 release of lighttpd.

Nginx vs Lighttpd for a small VPS