Making Nginx Easier To Manage
When working with nginx, to help reduce the time required to manually create sites, enable, disable and delete them, we created a utility called, nginxmgr. This project is hosted on GitHub and is licensed under GNU-GPL v2. This project was written in Ruby thanks to it's quick and agile language syntax and performance footprint. Although we are mainly a PHP shop here, we are extremely open-minded and understand that ever language has their pro's and con's, and we felt Ruby was a great choice for this project.
Right now, a simple template is included in the package which will create a basic site for you. You can change the template as needed, or wait for the next version which will allow for multiple included templates for things like SSL, Ruby vs PHP FastCGI's, and more.
Installation:
Before you install nginxmgr make sure you have the basic requirements. This includes an installed version of Ruby >= 1.9.1, a gem named micro-optparse and git. Once you confirmed these, you can continue on.
This installation example will use /usr/local as the basedir (You can change it to whatever you would prefer):
cd /usr/local
sudo git clone https://github.com/mikemackintosh/nginxmgr
cd nginxmgr
sudo chmod +x nginxmgr
sudo ln -s /usr/local/nginxmgr/nginxmgr /usr/bin
Congratulations! Installation has been completed!
Usage:
Here is a copy of the usage info:
# nginxmgr -h
nginxmgr: by Zyp.io
-i, --ip * set virtual host ip address
-c, --create [] create a site supplying the server name string
-e, --enable enable a site supplying the server name string
-d, --disable disable a site supplying the server name string
-D, --delete delete a site supplying the server name string
-h, --help Show this message
-v, --version Print version
To Create a Site
To use the utility, you would run the following command:
splug@dev.ve.zyp.io:~$ sudo nginxmgr -c "www.example.com,example.com,*.example.com"
Creating site: www.example.com
[Completed] Site has been created
Enabling site: www.example.com
Testing nginx configuration: nginx.
Restarting nginx: nginx.
[Completed] This site has been enabled and nginx reloaded
Thank you and have a nice day!
This would create a directory in /var/www/www.example.com (your site name is the first fqdn that you pass) and skeleton directories of web and logs within in. A template for nginx will also be placed within /etc/nginx/sites-available for your domain.
Note: By default, sites that are newely created are automatically
By default the listening IP address and port in *:80. You can change this by passing option -i ip.ad.dr.ess.
To Enable a Site
This utility will create a symbolic link from the sites-available dir to sites-enabled, run configtest on nginx, and restart nginx:
splug@dev.ve.zyp.io:~$ sudo nginxmgr -e www.example.com
Enabling site: www.example.com
Testing nginx configuration: nginx.
Restarting nginx: nginx.
[Completed] This site has been enabled and nginx reloaded
Thank you and have a nice day!
To Disable a Site
This utility will delete the symbolic link from the sites-enabled dir, run configtest on nginx, and restart it:
splug@dev.ve.zyp.io:~$ sudo nginxmgr -d www.example.com
Restarting nginx: nginx.
[Done!]
Thank you and have a nice day!
Note: This does not delete any userdata, only the link from sites-available to sites-enabled.
To Delete a Site
The -D, --delete switch will remove your domains configuration from nginx, restart if it is currently active, and move the directory /var/www/domain to /var/www/domain.old
splug@dev.ve.zyp.io:~$ sudo nginxmgr -D www.testing2.com
The www directory for this site has been moved to: '/var/www//www.testing2.com.old'
[Done!]
Thank you and have a nice day!
Errors
We have been running this utility for a long time and have yet to experience a bug or an issue. If you happen to run into one, let us know and we will get you straightened out. We have done some basic usage testing on platforms that don't meet the required dependencies, and have come up with the following gotchas.
If you receive the following error:
/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require': cannot load such file -- micro-optparse (LoadError)
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
from /usr/bin/nginxmgr:5:in `<main>'
Make sure you execute sudo gem install micro-optparse. This will install the missing dependency.
Summary
We have been using this utility in production for a few months, and it really makes life easier. Everyone is guilty that when out of desperation of a deadline, you fat finger a setting or miss a ;. nginxmgr helps prevent issues like this in the future.
Like we stated earlier, the next version is slated to receive config templates. We will add some options to enable ssl and webdav by default, and even a way to implement WWWBasicAuthentication.
Stay tuned for updates.
