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;"

SEE ALSO
Documentation at http://nginx.org/en/docs/.

For questions and technical support, please refer to http://nginx.org/en/support.html.

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

AUTHORS
-nosplit Igor Sysoev <igor@sysoev.ru>.

This manual page was originally written by Sergey A. Osokin <osa@FreeBSD.org.ru> as a result of compiling many nginx documents from all over the world.