Building NGINX from Source

In this article, we will walk you through the process of building NGINX from source, highlighting its importance, use cases, and providing a detailed step-by-step guide. …

Updated September 21, 2024

In this article, we will walk you through the process of building NGINX from source, highlighting its importance, use cases, and providing a detailed step-by-step guide.

Building NGINX from Source: Why Bother?

NGINX is an incredibly powerful and flexible web server that can be used for a variety of purposes, including serving static content, reverse proxying, load balancing, and more. However, the pre-built packages provided by your Linux distribution or other sources may not always meet your specific needs.

Building NGINX from source allows you to:

Customize the build process to include only the modules you need
Optimize performance for your specific use case
Stay up-to-date with the latest features and security patches

In this article, we will guide you through the process of building NGINX from source, helping you unlock its full potential.

Step 1: Prepare Your Environment

Before starting the build process, make sure you have the necessary dependencies installed on your system. These typically include:

GCC (GNU Compiler Collection)
OpenSSL development libraries
PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) development libraries
zlib development libraries

On a Debian-based system, you can install these dependencies using the following command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libpcre3-dev zlib1g-dev

Step 2: Download and Extract the NGINX Source Code

Next, download the latest NGINX source code from the official website. At the time of writing this article, the latest version is 1.21.0.

You can use wget or curl to download the source code:

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.21.0.tar.gz

Extract the archive using tar:

tar -xvf nginx-1.21.0.tar.gz

Step 3: Configure the Build Process

Navigate to the extracted source code directory and run the configure script:

cd nginx-1.21.0
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/nginx \
            --with-http_ssl_module \
            --with-http_v2_module \
            --with-stream \
            --with-stream_ssl_module

In this example, we are configuring NGINX to include the following modules:

http_ssl_module for SSL/TLS support
http_v2_module for HTTP/2 support
stream for stream proxying
stream_ssl_module for SSL/TLS support in stream proxying

You can customize this configuration to suit your specific needs.

Step 4: Build and Install NGINX

Run the following commands to build and install NGINX:

make
sudo make install

This will compile the source code, create the necessary binaries, and install them in the specified prefix directory (/usr/local/nginx in this example).

Step 5: Verify the Installation

After installation, verify that NGINX is working correctly by running:

sudo /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -v

This should output the version information for your newly built NGINX installation.

Conclusion

In this article, we have walked you through the process of building NGINX from source. By following these steps, you can create a customized and optimized NGINX installation that meets your specific needs. Remember to always verify the integrity of the downloaded source code using digital signatures or checksums.

By building NGINX from source, you are unlocking its full potential and taking control of your web server infrastructure. Happy building!