Installing nginx from source

You need to set up a website that handles a lot of traffic. nginx is a web server that is designed to handle high loads and is used by a lot of big web companies such as Facebook, Dropbox, and WordPress.

You'll find nginx packages in most major distributions but, if you want to extend nginx by using modules, you'll need to compile nginx from source.

In this section, we'll configure the nginx cookbook to do just that.

Getting ready

Let's get ready to set up nginx:

1. Create a Berksfile in your Chef repository including the nginx cookbook:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ subl Berksfile
   cookbook 'nginx', '~>2.7.6'
   

2. Install the nginx cookbook:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ berks install
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   Installing nginx (2.7.6)
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   

3. Upload the nginx cookbook to your Chef server:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ berks upload
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   Uploaded nginx (2.7.6) to: 'https://api.opscode.com:443/organizations/agilewebops'
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   

How to do it....