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Installing & running NGINX

For internals work you will often build NGINX from source and run it from a development tree. This page summarises installation options and common development workflows.

NGINX Extras provides the latest NGINX with 100+ pre-built modules, making it easy to add functionality without compiling.

RHEL/CentOS/AlmaLinux/Rocky

sudo dnf -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
sudo dnf -y install nginx

# Optional: Install recommended modules
sudo dnf -y groupinstall "nginx extras recommended"

sudo yum -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
sudo yum -y install epel-release
sudo yum -y install nginx

Debian/Ubuntu

See APT NGINX Extras setup for instructions.

Installing Additional Modules

# List available modules
sudo dnf list available | grep nginx-module

# Install a module (example: Brotli compression)
sudo dnf -y install nginx-module-brotli

Building From Source

For development, testing, or custom builds, compile NGINX from source.

Quick Start

# Download latest stable
wget https://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.26.2.tar.gz
tar xzf nginx-1.26.2.tar.gz
cd nginx-1.26.2

# Configure and build
./configure
make
sudo make install

By default, NGINX installs to /usr/local/nginx.

Building with Debug Symbols

For internals work and debugging:

./configure --with-debug
make
sudo make install

Or with full debugging symbols and no optimization:

CFLAGS="-g -O0" ./configure --with-debug
make
sudo make install

Common Configure Options

Option Description
--prefix=path Set installation prefix (default: /usr/local/nginx)
--with-debug Enable debug logging
--with-http_ssl_module Enable SSL/TLS support
--with-http_v2_module Enable HTTP/2 support
--with-http_v3_module Enable HTTP/3 (QUIC) support
--with-stream Enable TCP/UDP proxy module
--add-module=path Add a third-party module
--add-dynamic-module=path Add a third-party dynamic module

See Compiling NGINX for detailed build instructions.

Windows

Download the Windows binary from nginx.org and extract:

cd c:\
unzip nginx-1.26.2.zip
ren nginx-1.26.2 nginx
cd nginx
start nginx

Control:

nginx -s [ stop | quit | reopen | reload ]

For problems look in c:\nginx\logs\error.log or EventLog.

Production Use

Windows is not recommended for production NGINX deployments. Use Linux for best performance and stability.

After Installing