How To Install Nginx Web Server on Ubuntu 18.04

How To Install Nginx Web Server on Ubuntu 18.04 – This is a web server which can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and first publicly released in 2004. A company of the same name was founded in 2011 to provide support and Nginx plus paid software.

Prerequisites

In this article we are going to discuss How To Install Nginx Web Server on Ubuntu 18.04. Before you begin this guide, you should have a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on your server.

Apache and NGINX

The main difference between Apache and NGINX lies in their design architecture. Apache uses a process-driven approach and creates a new thread for each request. Whereas NGINX uses an event-driven architecture to handle multiple requests within one thread.

How To Configure Apache Virtual Hosts In Ubuntu 16.04-18.04

Step 1 – Installing Nginx

Nginx is available in Ubuntu’s default repositories, it is possible to install it from Ubuntu repositories using the apt packaging system. We will update our local package index so that we have access to the most recent package listings. Afterwards, we can install Nginx

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install nginx

Step 2 – Configuring the Firewall

Before testing Nginx, the Ubuntu firewall needs to be adjusted to allow access to the web service. Nginx registers itself as a service with ufw upon installation, making it straightforward to allow Nginx access.

$ sudo ufw app list

Available applications:
  Nginx Full
  Nginx HTTP
  Nginx HTTPS
  OpenSSH

You can enable port 80 using below command since we are going to discuss http port (80).

$ sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

You can verify the change by typing:

$ sudo ufw status

You should see HTTP traffic allowed as below

OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere                  
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere                  
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

Step 3 – Checking your Web Server

At the end of the installation process, Ubuntu 18.04 starts Nginx. The web server should already be up and running.

$ sudo systemctl status nginx

nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2019-11-17 16:08:19 UTC; 7 days ago
     Docs: man:nginx(8)
 Main PID: 2339 (nginx)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 1153)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
           ├─2339 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
           └─2360 nginx: worker process

You can access the default Nginx landing page to confirm that the software is running properly by navigating to your server’s IP address. If you do not know your server’s IP address, you can get it a few different ways.

Please your server’s IP address, enter it into your browser’s address bar:

http://your_server_ip

You should see the default Nginx landing page:

This page will show you that the Nginx web server running correctly on your system.

Step 4 – Managing the Process

Now that you have your web server up and running, let’s review some basic management commands.

To stop your web server, type:

$ sudo systemctl stop nginx

To start the web server when it is stopped, type:

$ sudo systemctl start nginx

To stop and then start the service again, type:

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

Reload without dropping connections.

$ sudo systemctl reload nginx

Enable or disable web server behavior

$ sudo systemctl disable nginx
$ sudo systemctl enable nginx

Please visit Nginx documentation site for more information