How To Install Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04

Published on April 21, 2016

Ubuntu

Nginx

Ubuntu 16.04

By Justin Ellingwood

Language

English

Introduction

Nginx is one of the most popular web servers in the world and is responsible for hosting some of the largest and highest-traffic sites on the internet. It is more resource-friendly than Apache in most cases and can be used as a web server or a reverse proxy.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how to get Nginx installed on your Ubuntu 16.04 server.

Prerequisites

Before you begin this guide, you should have a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on your server. You can learn how to configure a regular user account by following our initial server setup guide for Ubuntu 16.04.

When you have an account available, log in as your non-root user to begin.

Step 1: Install Nginx

Nginx is available in Ubuntu’s default repositories, so the installation is rather straight forward.

Since this is our first interaction with the apt packaging system in this session, we will update our local package index so that we have access to the most recent package listings. Afterwards, we can install nginx:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx

After accepting the procedure, apt-get will install Nginx and any required dependencies to your server.

Step 2: Adjust the Firewall

Before we can test Nginx, we need to reconfigure our firewall software to allow access to the service. Nginx registers itself as a service with ufw, our firewall, upon installation. This makes it rather easy to allow Nginx access.

We can list the applications configurations that ufw knows how to work with by typing:

sudo ufw app list

You should get a listing of the application profiles:

OutputAvailable applications:
  Nginx Full
  Nginx HTTP
  Nginx HTTPS
  OpenSSH

As you can see, there are three profiles available for Nginx:

Nginx Full: This profile opens both port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic) and port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic)
Nginx HTTP: This profile opens only port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic)
Nginx HTTPS: This profile opens only port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic)

It is recommended that you enable the most restrictive profile that will still allow the traffic you’ve configured. Since we haven’t configured SSL for our server yet, in this guide, we will only need to allow traffic on port 80.

You can enable this by typing:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

You can verify the change by typing:

sudo ufw status

You should see HTTP traffic allowed in the displayed output:

OutputStatus: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere                  
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere                  
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

Step 3: Check your Web Server

At the end of the installation process, Ubuntu 16.04 starts Nginx. The web server should already be up and running.

We can check with the systemd init system to make sure the service is running by typing:

systemctl status nginx

Output● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2016-04-18 16:14:00 EDT; 4min 2s ago
 Main PID: 12857 (nginx)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
           ├─12857 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on
           └─12858 nginx: worker process

As you can see above, the service appears to have started successfully. However, the best way to test this is to actually request a page from Nginx.

You can access the default Nginx landing page to confirm that the software is running properly. You can access this through your server’s domain name or IP address.

If you do not have a domain name set up for your server, you can learn how to set up a domain with DigitalOcean here.

If you do not want to set up a domain name for your server, you can use your server’s public IP address. If you do not know your server’s IP address, you can get it a few different ways from the command line.

Try typing this at your server’s command prompt:

ip addr show eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2; }' | sed 's/\/.*$//'

You will get back a few lines. You can try each in your web browser to see if they work.

An alternative is typing this, which should give you your public IP address as seen from another location on the internet:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -4 icanhazip.com

When you have your server’s IP address or domain, enter it into your browser’s address bar:

http://server_domain_or_IP

You should see the default Nginx landing page, which should look something like this:

Nginx default page

This page is simply included with Nginx to show you that the server is running correctly.

Step 4: Manage the Nginx Process

Now that you have your web server up and running, we can go over some basic management commands.

To stop your web server, you can type:

sudo systemctl stop nginx

To start the web server when it is stopped, type:

sudo systemctl start nginx

To stop and then start the service again, type:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

If you are simply making configuration changes, Nginx can often reload without dropping connections. To do this, this command can be used:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

By default, Nginx is configured to start automatically when the server boots. If this is not what you want, you can disable this behavior by typing:

sudo systemctl disable nginx

To re-enable the service to start up at boot, you can type:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Step 5: Get Familiar with Important Nginx Files and Directories

Now that you know how to manage the service itself, you should take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with a few important directories and files.

Content

/var/www/html: The actual web content, which by default only consists of the default Nginx page you saw earlier, is served out of the /var/www/html directory. This can be changed by altering Nginx configuration files.

Server Configuration

/etc/nginx: The Nginx configuration directory. All of the Nginx configuration files reside here.
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf: The main Nginx configuration file. This can be modified to make changes to the Nginx global configuration.
/etc/nginx/sites-available/: The directory where per-site “server blocks” can be stored. Nginx will not use the configuration files found in this directory unless they are linked to the sites-enabled directory (see below). Typically, all server block configuration is done in this directory, and then enabled by linking to the other directory.
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/: The directory where enabled per-site “server blocks” are stored. Typically, these are created by linking to configuration files found in the sites-available directory.
/etc/nginx/snippets: This directory contains configuration fragments that can be included elsewhere in the Nginx configuration. Potentially repeatable configuration segments are good candidates for refactoring into snippets.

Server Logs

/var/log/nginx/access.log: Every request to your web server is recorded in this log file unless Nginx is configured to do otherwise.
/var/log/nginx/error.log: Any Nginx errors will be recorded in this log.

Conclusion

Now that you have your web server installed, you have many options for the type of content to serve and the technologies you want to use to create a richer experience.

Learn how to use Nginx server blocks here. If you’d like to build out a more complete application stack, check out this article on how to configure a LEMP stack on Ubuntu 16.04.

Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.

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About the author

Justin Ellingwood

Author

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Former Senior Technical Writer at DigitalOcean, specializing in DevOps topics across multiple Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, as well as Debian 10 and 11.

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Thanks

Thank you , it was very useful

Chirag Nayyar

April 27, 2016

Thank you for this information

d410c1e5a96a4615a5c85e6a1d0279

May 23, 2016

Thanks for the tutorial! I followed all the tutorials for setting up a new Ubuntu 16.04 droplet, securing it and installing the LEMP stack. Everything is up and running however I have a practical question.

I am using Dreamweaver to manage files the server. I can connect to the server in Dreamweaver and see the files on the server. However, I am unable to upload to the server. I know the problem is due to permission issues but I don’t know the best way to resolve the problem.

Here are some points that may be important:

The /var/www/html directory is owned by root:root
Nginx uses the default user www-data
My user is configured with sudo access
As instructed in one of the tutorials, users can’t login to the server with a password so it is configured to use an RSA key

Thank you in advance.

bsy

June 23, 2016

Just upgraded to 16.04 from 14.04 following this https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-to-ubuntu-16-04-lts

Had issues with installing nginx so I removed nginx and reinstalled, but now when I run status i’m getting an error:

$ sudo systemctl status nginx
Failed to get properties: No such interface ''

torrent4all

October 16, 2016

This comment has been deleted

Roy Reveltas

November 20, 2016

Hi Justin, please update the server blocks link at the bottom of the article, it’s linking to article using Ubuntu v14, but there’s another, Ubuntu v16 article.

mathiasvagni

December 26, 2016

I believe there is a missing sudo ufw enable at step 2.

dennisbauszus

January 6, 2017

Following this tutorial I have NGINX running and be able to restart the service from my non root user using

sudo service nginx restart

However there seems to be a race between systemd and nginx as the service status informs me that it failed to read PID from file /run/nginx.pid: Invalid argument. As if systemd was expecting the PID file to be populated before nginx had the time to create it. As a work around I create this file:

/etc/systemd/system/nginx.service.d/override.conf

With following content:

[Service]
ExecStartPost=/bin/sleep 0.1

Therafter I need to reload the daemon.

systemctl daemon-reload

This resolves the problem. The service will now wait a moment which is enough for the PID file to be populated.

aleemfirnas22

July 27, 2017

I have Apache web server already installed in droplet which is used to serve html/php based websites, but for now I need to deploy a NodeJs app, so that I think I need to go with nGinx ? How can it be done ? can both be installed at one droplet, how ?

Thanks

Anthony Nandaa

August 15, 2017

Thanks for the nice tut. Just one more step also forgotten, above what was mentioned in the comment here.

sudo ufw allow 'OpenSSH'

Without this, you won’t be able to access your shell again through SSH, I had to rebuild by droplet twice before realizing this :(

Make sure sudo ufw status gives exactly the output as put in the tutorial:

Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere                  
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere                  
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

Awesome article!

Thanks! I was missing the step to allow nginx in ufw! Solved a big problem! :)

Prasanth Vaaheeswaran

November 26, 2017

For folks who are setting up certs via letsencrypts certbot, you will need to open up that tls port. So if you’re doing it right after, might as well select Nginx Full. Great article!

JefferyZ

January 5, 2018

This is a good start! Thank you

abhisheksankhe

January 21, 2018

Please help, I cannot install Nginx. My installation is One Click Wordpress. Nginx is needed for Let’s Encrypt SSL.

When I do :

sudo apt-get install nginx

I am getting following error:


Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
nginx is already the newest version (1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2).
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  augeas-lenses letsencrypt libaugeas0 python-augeas
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 48 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Setting up nginx-core (1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2) ...
Job for nginx.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript nginx, action "start" failed.
● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2018-01-21 20:09:15 UTC; 8ms ago
  Process: 17681 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
  Process: 17676 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jan 21 20:09:13 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 nginx[17681]: nginx: [emerg] listen() to [:...)
Jan 21 20:09:14 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 nginx[17681]: nginx: [emerg] listen() to 0....)
Jan 21 20:09:14 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 nginx[17681]: nginx: [emerg] listen() to [:...)
Jan 21 20:09:14 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 nginx[17681]: nginx: [emerg] listen() to 0....)
Jan 21 20:09:14 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 nginx[17681]: nginx: [emerg] listen() to [:...)
Jan 21 20:09:15 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 nginx[17681]: nginx: [emerg] still could no...)
Jan 21 20:09:15 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 systemd[1]: nginx.service: Control process ...1
Jan 21 20:09:15 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 systemd[1]: Failed to start A high performa....
Jan 21 20:09:15 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 systemd[1]: nginx.service: Unit entered fai....
Jan 21 20:09:15 mblive-wordpress-s-1vcpu-1gb-blr1-01 systemd[1]: nginx.service: Failed with resu....
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
dpkg: error processing package nginx-core (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nginx:
 nginx depends on nginx-core (>= 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2) | nginx-full (>= 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2) | nginx-light (>= 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2) | nginx-extras (>= 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2); however:
  Package nginx-core is not configured yet.
  Package nginx-full is not installed.
  Package nginx-light is not installed.
  Package nginx-extras is not installed.
 nginx depends on nginx-core (<< 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2.1~) | nginx-full (<< 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2.1~) | nginx-light (<< 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2.1~) | nginx-extras (<< 1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2.1~); however:
  Package nginx-core is not configured yet.
  Package nginx-full is not installed.
  Package nginx-light is not installed.
  Package nginx-extras is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package nginx (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-certbot-nginx:
 python-certbot-nginx depends on nginx; however:
  Package nginx is not configured yet.
  Package nginNo apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
                    No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
                          x-core which provides nginx is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package python-certbot-nginx (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 nginx-core
 nginx
 python-certbot-nginx
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

felixbade

January 24, 2018

I got an error here: $ sudo ufw allow ‘Nginx HTTP’ ERROR: Need ‘to’ or ‘from’ clause

This fixed it: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/firewall-apache-error

trentbaur

February 19, 2018

I would really appreciate some guidance on how to reliably force nginx to take up a changed static file. This seems to be a common issue based on this ServerFault post:

https://serverfault.com/questions/549200/how-do-i-force-nginx-to-load-new-static-files

I have followed all of the suggestion without success.

I have restarted nginx, restarted my droplet, I have DELETED THE ACTUAL FILE and it is still being served. (And yes, I have cleared my browser cache. And tried alternative computers.)

Andri Firmansyah

March 5, 2018

i follow the article carefully twice, but i never get the nginx ‘welcome …’ when i try include my ip in the browser :( please help!

yatharthg

June 5, 2018

After installing Nginx, how can i move my wordpress website to Nginx from Apache? Can someone please help

Andri Firmansyah

September 30, 2018

Can you help me please. Why when i test http://my_ip_address in my browser it always show this “This site can’t be reached”, but when test it using curl command $ curl http://my_ip_address the nginx welcome message appears perfectly.

avad

October 18, 2018

After

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

and

sudo ufw status

you get Status: inactive

please use this command:

sudo ufw enable

Very useful

Step 2 : Should have extra arguments added to guide

Already stated: sudo ufw allow ‘Nginx HTTP’ Add: sudo ufw allow ‘OpenSSH’ ; This allows you back into server using SSH

You will need this step prior to “sudo ufw status” otherwise you will get ‘Inactive’ Additional Step2a : sudo ufw enable

Then continue with : sudo ufw status

Eli Caldwell

January 11, 2019

I’m getting this error on step 4, but I didn’t change the etc/nginx/nginx.conf file.

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log Error while running nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf -t.

nginx: [emerg] unexpected “}” in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:50 nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

The nginx plugin is not working; there may be problems with your existing configuration. The error was: MisconfigurationError(‘Error while running nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf -t.\n\nnginx: [emerg] unexpected “}” in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:50\nnginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed\n’,)