Install NGINX from source code on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server

Normally you will install Nginx using apt-get install nginx, but in some scenarios we may need to install Nginx from source on Ubuntu. The reason could be we want to either install nginx with new custom nginx module which is not there in base nginx version or we don't want to use all the modules available by default in nginx. In this article we are going to delve into it. Please remember if we go this route of installing from source, going forward you need to do compile only if you need to add one more package or upgrade nginx.

Follow the given below steps to install Nginx from source code on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server.

Step-1

Plain text

1#sudo -i

Step-2

Download the Nginx source code from NGINX official site.

Always use latest available stable version. You can download the nginx source code from Nginx.org download page.

Here we are using curl command to download the current available latest package.

curl -O http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.6.2.tar.gz

Step-3

Add nginx user to run NGINX demon in server.

Command to add nginx user with nologin shell.

Plain text

1#useradd -s /sbin/nologin nginx

Step-4

Install dependency packages

Installing all the dependency packages and NGINX modules.

apt-get install build-essential libc6 libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl0.9.8 libssl-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev lsb-base openssl libssl-dev libgeoip1 libgeoip-dev google-perftools libgoogle-perftools-dev libperl-dev libgd2-xpm-dev libatomic-ops-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev python-dev

Step-5

Extract NGINX source code

User tar command to extract the downloaded nginx source code.

Plain text

1#tar -xvzf nginx-1.6.2.tar.gz

It will extract out the Nginx directory.

Compiling NGINX source code

First change to directory extracted out from nginx tar ball.

Plain text

1#cd nginx-1.6.2/

Step-6

Now compile the Nginx source code.

#./configure --user=nginx --group=nginx --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --with-rtsig_module --with-select_module --with-poll_module --with-file-aio --with-ipv6 --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_spdy_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_xslt_module --with-http_image_filter_module --with-http_geoip_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_mp4_module --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-http_random_index_module --with-http_secure_link_module --with-http_degradation_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_perl_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --with-cpp_test_module --with-cpu-opt=CPU --with-pcre --with-pcre-jit --with-md5-asm --with-sha1-asm --with-zlib-asm=CPU --with-libatomic --with-debug --with-ld-opt="-Wl,-E"

Install NGINX with below command

#make && make install

The nginx installation is successfully competed.

Now we have to create nginx daemon file which will be used for nginx service start,stop,status,reload,restart .

Step-7

Create Nginx Daemon file

Create a new file called nginx inside /etc/init.d

Plain text

1#vi /etc/init.d/nginx

And paste the below given code

JavaScript

1#! /bin/bash
2. /lib/lsb/init-functions
3#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4#                               Consts
5#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin/
7DAEMON=/usr/sbin/nginx
8PS="nginx"
9PIDNAME="nginx"                                #lets you do $PS-slave
10PIDFILE=$PIDNAME.pid                    #pid file
11PIDSPATH=/var/run
12DESCRIPTION="Nginx Server version 1.6.2"
13RUNAS=root                              #user to run as
14SCRIPT_OK=0                             #ala error codes
15SCRIPT_ERROR=1                          #ala error codes
16TRUE=1                                  #boolean
17FALSE=0                                 #boolean
18lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/nginx
19NGINX_CONF_FILE="/etc/nginx/nginx.conf"
20#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21#                               Simple Tests
22#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
23#test if nginx is a file and executable
24test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
25# Include nginx defaults if available
26if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
27        . /etc/default/nginx
28fi
29#set exit condition
30#set -e
31#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
32#                               Functions
33#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
34setFilePerms(){
35       if [ -f $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE ]; then
36                chmod 400 $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE
37        fi
38}
39configtest() {
40        $DAEMON -t -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
41}
42getPSCount() {
43        return `pgrep -f $PS | wc -l`
44}
45isRunning() {
46        if [ $1 ]; then
47                pidof_daemon $1
48                PID=$?
49                if [ $PID -gt 0 ]; then
50                        return 1
51                else
52                        return 0
53                fi
54        else
55                pidof_daemon
56                PID=$?
57                if [ $PID -gt 0 ]; then
58                        return 1
59                else
60                        return 0
61                fi
62        fi
63}
64#courtesy of php-fpm
65wait_for_pid () {
66        try=0
67       while test $try -lt 35 ; do
68                case "$1" in
69                        'created')
70                        if [ -f "$2" ] ; then
71                                try=''
72                                break
73                        fi
74                        ;;
75                        'removed')
76                        if [ ! -f "$2" ] ; then
77                                try=''
78                                break
79                        fi
80                        ;;
81                esac
82                #echo -n .
83                try=`expr $try + 1`
84                sleep 1
85        done
86}
87status(){
88        isRunning
89        isAlive=$?
90        if [ "${isAlive}" -eq $TRUE ]; then
91                echo "$PIDNAME found running with processes:  `pidof $PS`"
92        else
93                echo "$PIDNAME is NOT running."
94        fi
95}
96removePIDFile(){
97        if [ $1 ]; then
98                if [ -f $1 ]; then
99                        rm -f $1
100                fi
101        else
102                #Do default removal
103                if [ -f $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE ]; then
104                        rm -f $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE
105                fi
106        fi
107}
108start() {
109        log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESCRIPTION"
110        isRunning
111        isAlive=$?
112        if [ "${isAlive}" -eq $TRUE ]; then
113                log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ERROR
114        else
115                start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid $RUNAS --pidfile $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON \
116                -- -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
117                setFilePerms
118                log_end_msg $SCRIPT_OK
119        fi
120}
121stop() {
122        log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESCRIPTION"
123        isRunning
124        isAlive=$?
125        if [ "${isAlive}" -eq $TRUE ]; then
126                start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE
127                wait_for_pid 'removed' $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE
128                if [ -n "$try" ] ; then
129                        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ERROR
130                else
131                        removePIDFile
132                        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_OK
133                fi
134        else
135                log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ERROR
136        fi
137}
138reload() {
139        configtest || return $?
140        log_daemon_msg "Reloading (via HUP) $DESCRIPTION"
141        isRunning
142        if [ $? -eq $TRUE ]; then
143                `killall -HUP $PS` #to be safe
144                log_end_msg $SCRIPT_OK
145        else
146                log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ERROR
147        fi
148}
149quietupgrade() {
150        log_daemon_msg "Peforming Quiet Upgrade $DESCRIPTION"
151        isRunning
152        isAlive=$?
153        if [ "${isAlive}" -eq $TRUE ]; then
154                kill -USR2 `cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE`
155                kill -WINCH `cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin`
156               isRunning
157                isAlive=$?
158                if [ "${isAlive}" -eq $TRUE ]; then
159                        kill -QUIT `cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin`
160                        wait_for_pid 'removed' $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin
161                        removePIDFile $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin
162                        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_OK
163                else
164                        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ERROR
165                        log_daemon_msg "ERROR! Reverting back to original $DESCRIPTION"
166                        kill -HUP `cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE`
167                        kill -TERM `cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin`
168                        kill -QUIT `cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin`
169                        wait_for_pid 'removed' $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin
170                        removePIDFile $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE.oldbin
171                        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ok
172                fi
173        else
174                log_end_msg $SCRIPT_ERROR
175        fi
176}
177terminate() {
178        log_daemon_msg "Force terminating (via KILL) $DESCRIPTION"
179        PIDS=`pidof $PS` || true
180        [ -e $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE ] && PIDS2=`cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE`
181        for i in $PIDS; do
182                if [ "$i" = "$PIDS2" ]; then
183                        kill $i
184                        wait_for_pid 'removed' $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE
185                        removePIDFile
186                fi
187        done
188        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_OK
189}
190destroy() {
191        log_daemon_msg "Force terminating and may include self (via KILLALL) $DESCRIPTION"
192        killall $PS -q >> /dev/null 2>&1
193        log_end_msg $SCRIPT_OK
194}
195pidof_daemon() {
196    PIDS=`pidof $PS` || true
197    [ -e $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE ] && PIDS2=`cat $PIDSPATH/$PIDFILE`
198    for i in $PIDS; do
199        if [ "$i" = "$PIDS2" ]; then
200            return 1
201        fi
202    done
203    return 0
204}
205case "$1" in
206  start)
207        start
208        ;;
209  stop)
210        stop
211        ;;
212  restart|force-reload)
213        stop
214        sleep 1
215        start
216        ;;
217  reload)
218        $1
219        ;;
220  status)
221        status
222        ;;
223  configtest)
224        $1
225        ;;
226  quietupgrade)
227        $1
228        ;;
229  terminate)
230        $1
231        ;;
232  destroy)
233        $1
234        ;;
235  *)
236        FULLPATH=/etc/init.d/$PS
237        echo "Usage: $FULLPATH {start|stop|restart|force-reload|status|configtest|quietupgrade|terminate|destroy}"
238        echo "       The 'destroy' command should only be used as a last resort." 
239        exit 1
240        ;;
241esac
242exit 0