History: Nginx

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            ! Nginx

Nginx (read engine X) is a light weight webserver, reverse proxy and load balancer. It can be an alternative to Apache when using PHP-FPM protocol or can be a proxy to Apache.  

!! Config examples

!!! PHP FPM

Nginx provide modules to communicate to PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager). PHP-FPM can listen for connections using TCP port or sockets. The following example demostrates a Nginx config file to deploy Tiki using PHP-FPM.

{CODE(colors=nginx)}
server {
    listen       80;
    listen       443 ssl;
    server_name  example.com

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.key;

    root /var/www/html;
    index tiki-index.php index.php index.html;

    location / {
        # Use route.php to have SEO-friendly URLs
        try_files $uri $uri/ /route.php?q=$uri&$args;
    }

    location ~ \.(bak|exe|inc|ini|lib|pl|py|sh|sql|tpl)$ {
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include fastcgi_params;

        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

        # Avoid issues with HTTP header injections
        fastcgi_param  HTTP_PROXY         "";

        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}
{CODE}

The reason to set -+HTTP_PROXY ""+- is to avoid issues with HTTP header injections (https://httpoxy.org/).

!!! Proxying Apache

Sometimes, Tiki deployments are too coupled to -+.htaccess+- file and it is not possible to use the PHP-FPM and Nginx only. In this case it is possible to use Nginx as a reverse proxy to Apache. Nginx can directly deliver to browser static files and send to Apache just the requests to PHP files. The next example demonstrates this idea, supposing Apache is running on port 8080.

{CODE(colors=nginx)}
server {
    listen       80;
    listen       443 ssl;
    server_name  example.com

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.key;

    root /var/www/html;
    index tiki-index.php index.php index.html;

    location / {
        # Use route.php to have SEO-friendly URLs
        try_files $uri $uri/ /route.php?q=$uri&$args;
    }

    location ~ \.(bak|exe|inc|ini|lib|pl|py|sh|sql|tpl)$ {
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

        proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}
{CODE}


!!! Enforcing HTTPS

We can forbid insecure connections to Tiki by making Nginx redirect all content from http:// to https://. But it is important to check Tiki configuration to avoid conflicts. Tiki also needs to be setup to allow https everywhere. The most known issue about misconfiguration is problems to login to Tiki.

{CODE(colors=nginx)}
server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.com;
    return 301   https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen       443 ssl;
    server_name  example.com

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.key;

    root /var/www/html;
    index tiki-index.php index.php index.html;

    location / {
        # Use route.php to have SEO-friendly URLs
        try_files $uri $uri/ /route.php?q=$uri&$args;
    }

    location ~ \.(bak|exe|inc|ini|lib|pl|py|sh|sql|tpl)$ {
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include fastcgi_params;

        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

        # Avoid issues with HTTP header injections
        fastcgi_param  HTTP_PROXY         "";

        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}
{CODE}



!! Troubleshooting

!!! NetBSD PHP

The original NetBSD 6.0 nginx.conf has got a line
{CODE()}fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;{CODE}
This leads to a __File not found__ error page, and the line must be replaced with
{CODE()}fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $request_filename;{CODE}
or
{CODE()}fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME   $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;{CODE}
to enable PHP.

!!! Debian PHP
The same error as in NetBSD was observed as Debian 6.0 (Squeeze), the file is:
/etc/nginx/sites-available/default.

The problem is solved by using dotdeb:
[http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-php-5.3-nginx-and-php-fpm-on-ubuntu-debian]

!!! PHP General
((Nginx-php-fpm))


* [http://www.stevestreeting.com/2012/05/09/apache-to-nginx-php-fpm-part-1/]
* [http://www.stevestreeting.com/2012/05/24/apache-to-nginx-part-2/]