nginx(8)

NAME

nginx – HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server

SYNOPSIS

nginx [-?hqTtVv] [-c file] [-e file] [-g directives] [-p prefix] [-s signal]

DESCRIPTION

nginx (pronounced “engine x”) is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server. It is known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption.

The options are as follows:

-?, -h

Print help.

-c file

Use an alternative configuration file.

-e file

Use an alternative error log file. Special value stderr indicates that the standard error output should be used.

-g directives

Set global configuration directives. See EXAMPLES for details.

-p prefix

Set the prefix path. The default value is /etc/nginx.

-q

Suppress non-error messages during configuration testing.

-s signal

Send a signal to the master process. The argument signal can be one of: stop, quit, reopen, reload. The following table shows the corresponding system signals:

stop: SIGTERM
quit: SIGQUIT
reopen: SIGUSR1
reload: SIGHUP

-T

Same as -t, but additionally dump configuration files to standard output.

-t

Do not run, just test the configuration file. nginx checks the configuration file syntax and then tries to open files referenced in the configuration file, including binding to configured listen addresses.

-V

Print the nginx version, compiler version, and configure script parameters.

-v

Print the nginx version.

SIGNALS

The master process of nginx can handle the following signals:

SIGINT, SIGTERM: Shut down quickly.
SIGHUP: Reload configuration, start the new worker process with a new configuration, and gracefully shut down old worker processes.
SIGQUIT: Shut down gracefully.
SIGUSR1: Reopen log files.
SIGUSR2: Upgrade the nginx executable on the fly.
SIGWINCH: Shut down worker processes gracefully.

While there is no need to explicitly control worker processes normally, they support some signals too:

SIGTERM: Shut down quickly.
SIGQUIT: Shut down gracefully.
SIGUSR1: Reopen log files.

DEBUGGING LOG

To enable a debugging log, reconfigure nginx to build with debugging:

./configure --with-debug ...

and then set the debug level of the error_log:

error_log /path/to/log debug;

It is also possible to enable the debugging for a particular IP address:

events {
	debug_connection 127.0.0.1;
}

ENVIRONMENT

The NGINX environment variable is used internally by nginx and should not be set directly by the user.

FILES

/run/nginx.pid: Contains the process ID of nginx. The contents of this file are not sensitive, so it can be world-readable.
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf: The main configuration file.
stderr: Error log file.

EXIT STATUS

Exit status is 0 on success, or 1 if the command fails.

EXAMPLES

Test configuration file ~/mynginx.conf with global directives for PID and quantity of worker processes:

nginx -t -c ~/mynginx.conf \
	-g "pid /var/run/mynginx.pid; worker_processes 2;"

HISTORY

Development of nginx started in 2002, with the first public release on October 4, 2004.

AUTHORS

Igor Sysoev ⟨[email protected]⟩.

This manual page was originally written by Sergey A. Osokin ⟨[email protected]⟩ as a result of compiling many nginx documents from all over the world.