NGINX Systemd Service File

Works on Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, Ubuntu, and most modern Linux distributions.

Paths

The PIDFile and NGINX binary locations may differ depending on how NGINX was compiled.

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Service File

Save as /lib/systemd/system/nginx.service:

[Unit]
Description=The NGINX HTTP and reverse proxy server
After=syslog.target network-online.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -s reload
ExecStop=/bin/kill -s QUIT $MAINPID
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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Key Directives

Directive	Purpose
Type=forking	NGINX forks to background after starting
ExecStartPre	Validate config before starting
ExecReload	Graceful reload with -s reload
ExecStop	Graceful shutdown with QUIT signal
PrivateTmp	Security: isolate /tmp from other processes

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Usage

# Enable service at boot
sudo systemctl enable nginx

# Start service
sudo systemctl start nginx

# Reload configuration
sudo systemctl reload nginx

# Check status
sudo systemctl status nginx

# Stop service
sudo systemctl stop nginx

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Custom Binary Path

If NGINX is installed in a non-standard location, adjust the paths:

[Service]
ExecStartPre=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx -t -c /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
ExecStart=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
ExecReload=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx -s reload -c /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
PIDFile=/opt/nginx/logs/nginx.pid