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.
See also: nginx, nginx wiki, lighttpd 1.4.x mod_proxy, lighttpd 1.5.x mod_proxy_core