Question

I’ve just set up nginx to serve static request on one site, but I have lots of sites on my server and I wonder, should I right new nginx server configuration for all of them?
What I’m doing now. I have file with all virtual hosts entries for Apache with some-thing like this:

NameVirtualHost *:8080
<VirtualHost *:8080>
 ServerName sky2high.net
 DocumentRoot /home/mainsiter/data/www/sky2high.net
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:8080>
 ServerName surdo.asmon.ru
 DocumentRoot /home/surdo/data/www/surdo.asmon.ru
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:8080>
 ServerName surdoserver.ru
 DocumentRoot /home/surdo/data/www/surdoserver.ru
</VirtualHost>

I have this in apache’s ports.conf:

Listen 8080

And so I’ve set up nginx to work with one site (sky2high.net), created next configure file (/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/sky2high.net):

server {
 listen 80;
 server_name sky2high.net www.sky2high.net;
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
   proxy_set_header Host $host;

 access_log /var/log/nginx.access_log;

 location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|swf|ico|flv|txt|xml|docx|xlsx)$ {
  root /home/mainsiter/data/www/sky2high.net/;
  index index.php;
  access_log off;
  expires 30d;
 }
 location ~ /\.ht {
  deny all;
 }
 location / {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-for $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_connect_timeout 60;
  proxy_send_timeout 90;
  proxy_read_timeout 90;
  proxy_redirect off;
  proxy_set_header Connection close;
  proxy_pass_header Content-Type;
  proxy_pass_header Content-Disposition;
  proxy_pass_header Content-Length;
 }
} 

And it works fine for this domain, but of course another virtual hosts are broken.

So, the question is: is there ultimate config option for nginx, witch can help to handle all request, from all virtual hosts (domains) and serve them in the right way? I mean, option that allows not to write separete configure files for each virtual hosts (with all this doubled stuff like root and index options), but only one for all virtual hosts?

PS: should I move question to serverfault?

UPDATE:
Emm.. I wonder how is it works, but it is. I’ve made next config files:

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user www-data;
worker_processes  2;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    tcp_nodelay        on;

    gzip             on;   
    gzip_min_length  1000;
    gzip_proxied     any;
    gzip_disable     "msie6";

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

and

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

server {
    listen 80;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Connection close;
        proxy_pass_header Content-Type;
        proxy_pass_header Content-Disposition;
        proxy_pass_header Content-Length;
    }
}

I do not understand how is it works, but it is…

UPDATE 2: or it doesn’t work! I’ve looked to “top” in console and metioned that apache serves not only php request, but for static content either =(

Answer 1

What you do now is sending all the network traffic to 127.0.0.1:8080 without allowing Nginx to serve the static files.

What you should try is the following:

server {
listen 80;
server_name sky2high.net www.sky2high.net;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conf;
}
location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|tgz|gz|pdf|rar|bz2|exe|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf) {
root /folder/to/static/files;
expires 90d;
}
location ~* ^.+\.(css|js)$ {
root /folder/to/static/files;
expires 30d;
}

And in proxy.conf you put the following:

proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size 8m;
client_body_buffer_size 256k;
proxy_connect_timeout 60;
proxy_send_timeout 60;
proxy_read_timeout 60;
proxy_buffer_size 4k;
proxy_buffers 32 256k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 512k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 256k;

This should work for you