Setup Nginx Reverse Proxy over Apache on Debian or Ubuntu

Nginx is a lightweight web server that has been proven to serve static files faster than Apache. This tutorial will guide you on how to install Nginx as a reverse proxy over the Apache Web Server.

Requirements

You have installed Apache on your server. Apache is already running a site on port 80.

Change Apache Listening Port

Edit /etc/apache2/ports.conf to make Apache listen to a port 8080 instead of the default port 80.

Find the following line:

NameVirtualHost *:80
Listen 80

Change it to:

NameVirtualHost *:8080
Listen 8080

Do not forget to include your existing vhost listening port in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*

Change:

<VirtualHost *:80>

To:

<VirtualHost *:8080>

Disable Unused Modules In Apache

Since HTTP requests are now handled by Nginx, we can disable KeepAlive in Apache. Edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and change:

KeepAlive Off

Also, run the following commands to disable unused modules.

a2dismod deflate
a2dismod cgi
a2dismod autoindex
a2dismod negotiation
a2dismod ssl

Install The Forward Module

Install mod_rpaf in Apache to forward the visitor's IP to Apache. Otherwise, your scripts will read REMOTE_ADDR values as the server IP.

apt-get install libapache2-mod-rpaf

Stop the Apache service

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Setup Nginx

Install Nginx.

apt-get install nginx

Remove the default vhost to prevent conflicts.

rm -rf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*

Create a new default vhost:

cat >/etc/nginx/sites-available/000-default <<EOF
server {
   access_log off;

   location / {
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header Host $host;
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
   }
}
EOF

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/000-default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/000-default

Create a vhost for the existing website to forward requests to Apache:

cat >/etc/nginx/sites-available/domain.com <<EOF
server {
   server_name www.domain.com domain.com;
   root /var/www/domain.com/;

   access_log off;

   # Static contents
   location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|js)$ {
       expires max;
   }

   # Dynamic content, forward to Apache
   location / {
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header Host $host;
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
   }
}
EOF

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/domain.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/domain.com

Restart Nginx, and it’s done.

/etc/init.d/nginx restart