Managing nginx

Say you need to set up a website, which handles a lot of traffic simultaneously. nginx is a web server that is designed to handle many connections 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 community cookbook to do just that.

Getting ready

Let's get ready for set up of nginx:

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

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ subl Berksfile
   

   cookbook 'nginx'

2. Install the nginx cookbook:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ berks install
   

   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   Installing nginx (2.7.4)
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...

3. Upload the nginx cookbook to your Chef server:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ berks upload
   

   Using nginx (1.7.0)
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   Uploading nginx (1.7.0) to: 'https://api.opscode.com:443/organizations/agilewebops'
   ...TRUNCATED...