How To: Install a fast efficient web server on your Raspberry Pi
A tutorial by D.M. Wiig
In a previous tutorial I discussed setting up your RPi as a web server using a standard LAMP stack configuration. I have been using my RPi with this installation self-hosting a WordPress web site and have had very good success. For situations where a heavy load or memory intensive applications are anticipated the standard LAMP stack may not be sufficient. The Apache server and MySql database used in the configuration work well but the RPi is memory limited and may not effectively handle heavy loads.
In these kinds of environments it may be worthwhile to set up your RPi with faster and more memory efficient software. The nginx server (pronounced ‘engine x’) is designed to be fast and memory efficient and is an easy installation on an RPi running a Debian Wheezy Raspian OS. The first part of this turorial will guide you throught the basic setup and initial configuration of nginx on your RPi.
To get started it is a good idea to make sure that all of your installed software is running the most current versions. Open a terminal program and issue the command:
$ sudo apt-get update
When the update is completed issue the following command to install the nginx server:
$ sudo apt-get install nginx
This command will download and install the nginx server and all dependencies needed for the server to run. By default the server is installed in the directory /etc/nginx, so issue the following commands to get to the directory:
$ cd /etc/nginx
$ dir
You should see the output shown below:
pi@raspberrypi /etc/nginx $ dir
conf.d koi-utf mime.types naxsi.rules proxy_params sites-available uwsgi_params
fastcgi_params koi-win naxsi_core.rules nginx.conf scgi_params sites-enabled win-utf
pi@raspberrypi /etc/nginx $
We have several options at this point, but we will stay with the default configuration found in the ‘sites-enables’directory. Issue the commands:
$ cd sites-enabled
$ dir
You should see the following:
pi@raspberrypi /etc/nginx $ cd sites-enabled
pi@raspberrypi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled $ dir
default
pi@raspberrypi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled $
We will make a couple of changes to the default configuration file using the nano editor. Make sure you give yourself ‘super user’ privileges by using:
$ sudo nano default
You will see the entire configuation file in the editor but we are only interested for now in the following section:
##
server {
listen 80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
#listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6
root /usr/share/nginx/www;
index index.html index.htm;
# Make site accessible from http://localhost/
server_name localhost;
Uncomment the ‘listen 80’ line if it is commented (with a #) out. Do the same for the ‘server_name’ line if it is commented out.
Exit the editor by using Ctrl-O to write the file, and then Ctrl-X to exit the file. We can create a test file to test the server by editing the default index page. To access the page issue the command:
$ cd /usr/share/nginx/www
$ dir
You will see:
pi@raspberrypi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled $ cd /usr/share/nginx/www
pi@raspberrypi /usr/share/nginx/www $ dir
50x.html index.html
To edit the index.html file invoke the editor with:
$ sudo nano index.html
You should see:
GNU nano 2.2.6 File: index.html
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor=”white” text=”black”>
<center><h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1></center>
</body>
</html>
[ Read 9 lines ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where Is ^V Next Page ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell
Let’s modify the file by inserting the line ‘This is some basic HTML markup to serve!’. After the </head> tag insert the following line:
<br><center><h2>This is some basic HTML to serve!</h2></center>
Your file should look like this:
GNU nano 2.2.6 File: index.html
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor=”white” text=”black”>
<center><h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1></center>
<br><center><h2>This is some basic HTML to serve!</h2></center>
</body>
</html>
[ Read 9 lines ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit
Exit the editor with the Ctrl-O, Ctrl-X commands.
At this point we can start the server service and check to make sure that nginx is up and running properly. Start the server with:
pi@raspberrypi /usr/share/nginx/www $ sudo service nginx start
Starting nginx: nginx.
To check the server open a web browser and enter the URL http://localhost. You should see index page message displayed. If you have access to another computer on the same network as your RPi you can check the server by entering the local URL in the browser. You should see the default index page greeting. At this point your RPi can serve basic HTML markup to any server on the local network. In the next tutorial I will discuss how to set up and configure PHP and MySql for use with your nginx server setup.
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