Cranking Nginx to 11

You may see Nginx as the run of the mill web server, geared towards serving up static files and your language of choice but there is so much more to Nginx than that.

Under the hood is a treasure trove of additional features and configurations that can help you take things to the next level. This includes having Nginx talk directly to Memcached / Redis (perfect for APIs, without hitting your application), proxy functionality, GeoIP, Lua in the config, MogileFS file serving, improved headers manipulation, and the less useful yet cool ability to query Drizzle / Postgres directly. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

I will take you one a journey to explore the hidden corners of Nginx and show you how to crank it up to 11!

Transcript

1. Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson PHP UK, London, 2013 Cranking Nginx To 11 Friday, 22 February 13
2. Co-founded Orchestra.io Work at EngineYard PEAR Developer From Iceland @h on Twitter Helgi Friday, 22 February 13
3. Nginx Just a web server? Friday, 22 February 13
4. ✓ Web Server ✓ Proxy ✓ Cache ✓ Mail Proxy ✓ And more! No! It’s so much more! Friday, 22 February 13
5. Important for tweaking Friday, 22 February 13
6. Always run configtest before doing anything! Friday, 22 February 13
7. Reload (HUP Signal) Friday, 22 February 13
8. Reload (HUP Signal) ‣ Reloads config ‣ Starts up new workers ‣ Old workers stop listening ‣ Finish up any work they have Friday, 22 February 13
9. Upgrade (USR2 Signal) Friday, 22 February 13
10. Upgrade (USR2 Signal) ‣ Live upgrade of Nginx executable ‣ Starts up a new Master ‣ Run in parallel ‣ Old Workers gracefully shutdown ‣ Old Master can be brought back Friday, 22 February 13
11. Requires --with-debug during build time error_log /path/to/log debug; Debugging Friday, 22 February 13
12. events { debug_connection 1.2.3.4; debug_connection 1.2.3.0/24; } Connection Specific Friday, 22 February 13
13. Rewrite Log entries are notice level rewrite_log on; error_log /path/to/log notice; Debug Rewrite Rules Friday, 22 February 13
14. Rewrite Module Friday, 22 February 13
15. Regex (PCRE) Friday, 22 February 13
16. Responsible for all if statements, file exists checks, returns and more. Friday, 22 February 13
17. Can work with most Nginx variables such as $http_cookie, $user_agent, $uri and countless others. Friday, 22 February 13
18. The power of SET Text set $helgi “Hi”; Friday, 22 February 13
19. Forward Domains server { server_name www.helgi.ws; return 301 $scheme://helgi.ws$request_uri; } Friday, 22 February 13
20. Load Balancing Friday, 22 February 13
21. upstream web_workers { server www1.example.com; server www2.example.com; server www3.example.com; server www4.example.com; } Simple Round Robin Friday, 22 February 13
22. upstream web_workers { ip_hash; server www1.example.com; server www2.example.com; server www3.example.com; server www4.example.com; } Consistent IP Routing Friday, 22 February 13
23. upstream web_workers { server www1.example.com; server www2.example.com weight=2 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15; server www3.example.com weight=4 max_fails=3; server www4.example.com weight=4 max_fails=4 fail_timeout=20; keepalive 8; } Different Weights weight and ip_hash can work together in Nginx 1.3.1+ Friday, 22 February 13
24. Cache Friday, 22 February 13
25. http { proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_cache_path /dev/shm/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=my-cache:8m max_size=2g inactive=600m; proxy_temp_path /dev/shm/nginx/tmp; proxy_cache_use_stale updating; server { location / { proxy_pass http://example.net; proxy_cache my-cache; proxy_cache_valid 200 302 60m; proxy_cache_valid 404 1m; } } } Friday, 22 February 13
26. Headers Friday, 22 February 13
27. add_header add_header Set-Cookie "_orchestra=1; Max-Age=2; Path=/"; Friday, 22 February 13
28. expires location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|js|jpeg|png)$ { expires 1h; } Friday, 22 February 13
29. Modules Friday, 22 February 13
30. cd /path/to/your/nginx/source ./configure --add-module=/usr/local/nginx/mod/headers-more/ make make install How to compile modules into nginx Friday, 22 February 13
31. wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpHeadersMoreModule Introducing Friday, 22 February 13
32. more_set_headers 'Server: My-Temple'; # set and clear output headers location /bar { more_set_headers 'X-MyHeader: blah' 'X-MyHeader2: foo'; more_set_headers -t 'text/plain text/css' 'Content-Type: text/foo'; more_set_headers -s '400 404 500 503' -s 413 'Foo: Bar'; more_clear_headers 'Transfer-Encoding' 'Content-Type'; } # set output headers location /type { more_set_headers 'Content-Type: text/plain'; } Friday, 22 February 13
33. # set input headers location /foo { more_set_input_headers 'Host: London'; more_set_input_headers -t 'text/plain' 'X-PHP-UK: bah'; } # replace input header X-PHP-UK *only* if it already exists more_set_input_headers -r 'X-PHP-UK: howdy'; Friday, 22 February 13
34. Blue Sky thinking! Friday, 22 February 13
35. Memcache Friday, 22 February 13
36. Nginx PHP Memcache Request Flow Friday, 22 February 13
37. Nginx PHP Memcache SET GET Friday, 22 February 13
38. location / { if ($request_method != GET) { rewrite . @fallback last; } # append an extenstion for proper MIME type detection if ($args ~* format=json) { rewrite ^/$uri/?(.*)$ /$uri.json$1 break; } if ($args ~* format=xml) { rewrite ^/$uri/?(.*)$ /$uri.xml$1 break; } if ($args ~* format=html) { default_type text/html; add_header "Content" "text/html; charset=utf8"; charset utf-8; } set $memcached_key "$uri?$args"; memcached_pass 127.0.0.1:2211; error_page 500 404 405 = @fallback; } location @fallback { /* pass to FastCGI */ } Friday, 22 February 13
39. set $memcached_key "$uri?$args"; memcached_pass 127.0.0.1:2211; error_page 500 404 405 = @fallback; Friday, 22 February 13
40. Set Misc Module http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpSetMiscModule Friday, 22 February 13
41. Provides various extras for the rewrite module Friday, 22 February 13
42. location /beer { set $amount $arg_amount; set_if_empty $amount 9999; } /beer?amount=12 /beer?amount= Friday, 22 February 13
43. location /beer { set $amount $arg_amount; set_if_empty $amount 9999; set_unescape_uri $name $amount; set_quote_sql_str $quoted_name $name; } Friday, 22 February 13
44. And more! set_md5 set_sha1 set_encode_base64 set_decode_base64 set_hmac_sha1 set_random set_secure_random_alphanum and more Friday, 22 February 13
45. MySQL Friday, 22 February 13
46. drizzle-nginx-module http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpDrizzleModule Friday, 22 February 13
47. upstream mysql_backend { drizzle_server 127.0.0.1:3306 dbname=test password=some_pass user=web charset=utf8 protocol=mysql; } Friday, 22 February 13
48. location /secret { set_unescape_uri $name $arg_name; set_quote_sql_str $quoted_name $name; drizzle_query "INSERT INTO agents (name) VALUES ($quoted_name)"; drizzle_pass mysql_backend; } Friday, 22 February 13
49. http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpFormInputModule Nginx doesn’t expose POST as a variable Friday, 22 February 13
50. location /secret { set_unescape_uri $name $arg_name; set_quote_sql_str $quoted_name $name; drizzle_query "SELECT * FROM agents WHERE name = $quoted_name"; drizzle_pass mysql_backend; } Friday, 22 February 13
51. Does not output JSON by default Friday, 22 February 13
52. JSON + CSV Output Friday, 22 February 13
53. https://github.com/agentzh/rds-json-nginx-module https://github.com/agentzh/rds-csv-nginx-module Friday, 22 February 13
54. location /secret { set_unescape_uri $name $arg_name; set_quote_sql_str $quoted_name $name; drizzle_query "SELECT * FROM agents where name = $quoted_name"; drizzle_pass mysql_backend; rds_json on; } Friday, 22 February 13
55. Questions? @h helgi@engineyard.com Please rate at joind.in/8042 Friday, 22 February 13