Introduction Apache and Nginx are two popular open source web servers often used with PHP. It can be useful to run both of them on the same virtual machine when hosting multiple websites which have varied requirements. The general solution for running two web servers on a single system is to either use multiple IP addresses or different port numbers. Droplets which have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses can be configured to serve Apache sites on one protocol and Nginx sites on the other, but this isn't currently practical, as IPv6 adoption by ISPs is still not widespread. This tutorial will show you how to configure Nginx as both a web server and as a reverse proxy for Apache — all on one Droplet. Depending on the web application, code changes might be required to keep Apache reverse-proxy-aware, especially when SSL sites are configured. We will host four domain names on one Droplet. Two will be served by Nginx: example. The remaining two, foobar. You can set up a standard account by following Steps 2 and 3 of the. See Step 3 of for an example of how to do this. If you host your domains' DNS elsewhere, you should create appropriate A records there instead. Optional References This tutorial requires basic knowledge of virtual hosts in Apache and Nginx, and SSL certificate creation and configuration. For more information on these topics, see the following articles. This is libapache2-mod-fastcgi, available in Ubuntu's multiverse repository, which must first be enabled in the sources. Edit the Apache configuration file and change the port number of Apache. Note: Web servers are generally set to listen on 127. Our aim is to set up Apache in such a way that its websites do not see a reverse proxy in front of it. So, we will configure it to listen on 8080 on all IP addresses. Next we'll edit the default virtual host file of Apache. The directive in this file is set to serve sites only on port 80. These configuration directives pass requests for. If you see the warning Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message. It doesn't affect us now. This will give you a list of configuration specifications PHP is using. Step 5 — Creating Virtual Hosts for Apache We will create two Apache virtual host files for the domains foobar. This begins with creating document root directories for both sites. First we'll create an index file for each site. Then do the same for test. Note 2: These are only the most basic directives. For a complete guide on setting up virtual hosts in Apache, see. Now that both Apache virtual hosts are set up, enable the sites using the a2ensite command. This creates a symbolic link to the virtual host file in the sites-enabled directory. You should see: Also, check if PHP is working by accessing the info. You should see the same PHP configuration spec list on each site as you saw in Step 1. We now have two websites hosted on Apache at port 8080. Step 6 — Installing and Configuring Nginx In this step we will install Nginx and configure the domains example. For a complete guide on setting up virtual hosts in Nginx, see. } areas of a configuration file server blocks. Create a server block for the primary virtual host, example. Paste the following into the file for example. Now create a virtual host file for Nginx's second domain, sample. Then enable both the sites by creating symbolic links to the sites-enabled directory. Look under the PHP Variables section again. At this point, we have installed Nginx and created two virtual hosts. Next we will set up an additional virtual host to proxy requests meant for domains hosted on Apache. Requests for these domain names will be proxied to Apache. This specifies the names of both Apache virtual host domains, and proxies their requests to Apache. Scroll down to the PHP Variables section and check the values displayed. We have successfully setup Nginx to proxy requests for specific domains to Apache. Without this module, some PHP applications would require code changes to work seamlessly from behind a proxy. This module is present in Ubuntu's repository as libapache2-mod-rpaf but is outdated and doesn't support certain configuration directives. Instead, we will install it from source. Install the packages needed to compile and build the module: sudo apt-get install unzip build-essential apache2-threaded-dev Download the latest stable release from GitHub. This will contain the configuration directives. Useful for when Apache is behind a SSL proxy. Now do a configuration test. Step 9 — Setting Up HTTPS Websites Optional In this step we will configure SSL certificates for both the domains hosted on Apache. Nginx supports SSL termination so we can set up SSL without modifying Apache's configuration files. Create a directory for the SSL certificates and their private keys. Generate self-signed certificates for both foobar. } blocks for each domain. You should delete it's current contents and when finished, your apache vhost file should look similar to below. With these variables set, PHP applications do not have to be specially configured to work behind a reverse proxy. Step 10 — Blocking Direct Access to Apache Optional Since Apache is listening on port 8080 on the public IP address, it is accessible by everyone. It can be blocked by working the following IPtables command into your firewall rule set. Once port 8080 is blocked in your firewall, test that Apache is unreachable on it. Open your web browser and try accessing one of Apache's domain names on port 8080. With the IPtables tcp-reset option in place, an outsider would see no difference between port 8080 and a port that doesn't have any service on it. Note: IPtables rules do not survive a system reboot by default. There are multiple ways to preserve IPtables rules, but the easiest is to use iptables-persistent in Ubuntu's repository. Step 11 — Serving Static Files Using Nginx Optional When Nginx proxies requests for Apache's domains, it sends every file request to domain to Apache. Nginx is faster than Apache in serving static files like images, JavaScript and style sheets. So in this section we will configure Nginx's apache virtual host file to directly serve static files and just send PHP requests to Apache. Open the apache virtual host file. If the file has a. Even if the file is not found in the document root, the request is passed on to Apache so that application features like permalinks work without problems. Safe the file and perform a configuration test. The only caveat of this setup is that Apache will not be able to restrict access to static files. Access control for static files would need to be configured in Nginx's apache virtual host file. This prevents Nginx from printing the contents of files like. Conclusion Having completed this tutorial, you should now have one Ubuntu Droplet with Nginx serving example. Though Nginx is acting as a reverse-proxy for Apache, Nginx's proxy service is transparent and connections to Apache's domains appear be served directly from Apache itself.
