IT Development/Doc

IT Development

Main page — Infrastructure — Documentation / Tools — Portfolio — Technology Committee — Project requests

This page documents how to configure or otherwise manage the WMUK servers.

Overview

The servers run:

• PHP 5.x
• MySQL
• Nginx (web server)

Paths

/etc/nginx

Nginx config path. Core vhosts are stored in /etc/nginx/sites-available. It is recommended not to touch these as they are in version control (SCM: config/nginx). Website vhosts can be configured with the tools detailed below.

/var/www

Root path for websites etc. Each virtual host will be given a sub-directory (with the name of the domain, see below).

Tools

Nginx/vhost management tools are stored on the SCM, using Mercurial, under config/Nginx-Config.

generate_vhost

Used to set up new virtual host domains based on skeleton files. See below.

nginx_ensite/nginx_dissite

Core tool for managing the master nginx configurations, should be rarely needed

htpasswd.py

Used to generate htpasswd files for HTTP basic auth (when the normal htpasswd tool is unavailable). Again, rarely needed.

Nginx

Very easy to configure using files, but an automated tool is also installed. Configuration guide for Nginx.

Using the generate_vhost tool

In a console run:

sudo generate_vhosts

It will ask you for the domain name you are hosting, and also to type in the public IP of the server (it will remind you). It will create a directory /var/www/<domain name> and copy a skeleton configuration into it. Then run:

sudo service nginx reload

This reloads the nginx config; if you see errors contact Tom.

Source code for the tool: Nginx-Config in the SCM

.htaccess??

.htaccess is a system of Apache web server most often used to do URL rewriting. Nginx does not support this method. If you have a .htaccess file then set up the vhost using the above tool then ping Tom who will convert the .htaccess to Nginx format.