Starting, Stopping, and Reloading Configuration

To start nginx, run the executable file. Once nginx is started, it can be controlled by invoking the executable with the -s parameter. Use the following syntax:

nginx -s signal

Where signal may be one of the following:

  • stop — fast shutdown
  • quit — graceful shutdown
  • reload — reloading the configuration file
  • reopen — reopening the log files

Changes made in the configuration file will not be applied until the command to reload configuration is sent to nginx or it is restarted. To reload configuration, execute:

nginx -s reload

A signal may also be sent to nginx processes with the help of Unix tools such as the kill utility. In this case a signal is sent directly to a process with a given process ID. The process ID of the nginx master process is written, by default, to the nginx.pid in the directory /usr/local/nginx/logs or /var/run. For example, if the master process ID is 1628, to send the QUIT signal resulting in nginx’s graceful shutdown, execute:

kill -s QUIT 1628

For getting the list of all running nginx processes, the ps utility may be used, for example, in the following way:

ps -ax | grep nginx

Serving Static Content

Add the following location block to the server block:

location / {
    root /data/www;
}

This location block specifies the “/” prefix compared with the URI from the request. For matching requests, the URI will be added to the path specified in the root directive, that is, to /data/www, to form the path to the requested file on the local file system. If there are several matching location blocks nginx selects the one with the longest prefix. The location block above provides the shortest prefix, of length one, and so only if all other location blocks fail to provide a match, this block will be used.

When nginx selects a location block to serve a request it first checks location directives that specify prefixes, remembering location with the longest prefix, and then checks regular expressions. If there is a match with a regular expression, nginx picks this location or, otherwise, it picks the one remembered earlier.

The resulting configuration of a proxy server will look like this:

server {
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/;
    }

    location ~ \.(gif|jpg|png)$ {
        root /data/images;
    }
}

This server will filter requests ending with .gif, .jpg, or .png and map them to the /data/images directory (by adding URI to the root directive’s parameter) and pass all other requests to the proxied server configured above.

refrence: Beginner’s Guide