If you look at the forks of this script, the main change people make is to the default values of a few variables. It seems like people are missing instructions on how to configure these using /etc/default/nginx [1].

I suggest adding instructions to clearly show how to customize all variables that people typically need customized.

[1] -

One line says wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.5.9.tar.gz while right after it, it says tar -xvf nginx-1.7.9.tar.gz.

I think you should just update the wget line to reference 1.7.9 instead.

This is for Ubuntu 14.04 upstart script. Do you have any plan to update it for Ubuntu 16.04 to use systemd script.

Thanks.
Andrew

As per title, I would suggest this

#
# ...
#

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#                               Functions
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LSB_FUNC=/lib/lsb/init-functions

# Test that init functions exists
test -r $LSB_FUNC || {
    echo "$0: Cannot find $LSB_FUNC! Script exiting." 1>&2
    exit 5
}

. $LSB_FUNC

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#                               Consts
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
PS="nginx"
PIDNAME="nginx"                #lets you do $PS-slave
PIDFILE=$PIDNAME.pid     #pid file
RUNAS=root                        #user to run as
SCRIPT_OK=0                     #ala error codes
SCRIPT_ERROR=1             #ala error codes
TRUE=1                               #boolean
FALSE=0                             #boolean

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#                               Simple Tests
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ]; then
    . /etc/default/nginx
fi

DESCRIPTION=${DESCRIPTION:-"Nginx Server..."}
NGINXPATH=${NGINXPATH:-/usr/local/nginx}
DAEMON=${NGINXPATH}/sbin/nginx
PIDSPATH=${NGINXPATH}/logs      #default pid location, you should change it
NGINX_CONF_FILE=${NGINXPATH}/conf/nginx.conf

lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/nginx

#
# ...
#

After running reload all sites display a 502 error and restarting the service does not work either. I have to kill all the nginx workers and run start again to get nginx back up and running.

Any idea what may be causing this?

Great work, love it :)

The default values though are not self explanatory:

PATH
NGINXPATH
DAEMON
PS
PIDNAME
PIDFILE
PIDSPATH
DESCRIPTION
RUNAS
NGINX_CONF_FILE

I have no idea what the differences and connections are between PATH and NGINXPATH. Or for example PIDNAME, PIDFILE and PIDSPATH.

Where can I find these?

I edited my /etc/default/nginx file with the following:

NGINXPATH=/opt/nginx

But it had no effect. The $DAEMON variable was still trying to use the default value ("/usr/local/nginx") value.

Is this the expected behavior?

ubuntu 14.04 followed the instructions to a tee. checked the permissions with ls -l, I've chmod already exactly as the instructions tell. Still no permission for nginx

I've resolved a couple of issues with this init script by overriding variables in /etc/default/nginx, and the Nginx server now starts correctly, but I am unable to stop the nginx process via the service command. Can you think of a variable that might interfere with stopping the process, but not with starting it?

ubuntu server 12.04.03 x86_64

nginx-1.5.6.tar.gz

                Putty Print

root@ubuntu:/etc/init.d# service nginx status

• nginx found running with processes: 1368 1366
  root@ubuntu:/etc/init.d# service nginx reload
  nginx: the configuration file /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf syntax is ok
  nginx: configuration file /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf test is successful
• Reloading (via HUP) Nginx Server... Hangup
  root@ubuntu:/etc/init.d# service nginx restart
• Stopping Nginx Server... [ OK ]
  root@ubuntu:/etc/init.d# service nginx status
• nginx is NOT running.
  root@ubuntu:/etc/init.d#

Not an issue but a suggestion for enabling Version command to output the list of compiled installed Nginx modules.

I got this error message every time when I start a new nginx server and I don't know is it a problem or it's okay:

root@1abf1c2ef16c:/bin# sudo service nginx start
/etc/init.d/nginx: 1: /etc/init.d/nginx: N: not found

• Starting Nginx Server... [ OK ]

root@1abf1c2ef16c:/bin#

I needed to modify the DAEMON value, because I installed the nginx binary in different place:

DAEMON=${DAEMON:-/usr/local/sbin/nginx} # path to daemon binary

And this is my report when I built Nginx from source:

Configuration summary

• using system PCRE library

• using system OpenSSL library

• md5: using OpenSSL library

• sha1: using OpenSSL library

• using system zlib library

  nginx path prefix: "/usr/local/nginx"
  nginx binary file: "/usr/local/sbin"
  nginx configuration prefix: "/usr/local/nginx/conf"
  nginx configuration file: "/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf"
  nginx pid file: "/usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid"
  nginx error log file: "/usr/local/nginx/logs/error.log"
  nginx http access log file: "/usr/local/nginx/logs/access.log"
  nginx http client request body temporary files: "client_body_temp"
  nginx http proxy temporary files: "proxy_temp"
  nginx http fastcgi temporary files: "fastcgi_temp"
  nginx http uwsgi temporary files: "uwsgi_temp"
  nginx http scgi temporary files: "scgi_temp"

Thank you for the script -- it's great. I had to make one change that might help you and your users... I added a umask 007 to the script. This is because nginx creates log files where anyone can read them. This changes things, so only owner and group members can read them.

Hi - been using the script for many years. However, in Ubuntu 20.04:

sudo service nginx reload
Job for nginx.service failed.
See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

sudo service nginx status
● nginx.service - LSB: nginx init.d dash script for Ubuntu or other *nix.
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/nginx; generated)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2020-12-13 22:40:39 UTC; 29min ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 11201 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/nginx start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 11736 ExecReload=/etc/init.d/nginx reload (code=exited, status=7)
Main PID: 11217 (nginx)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 1137)
Memory: 6.9M
CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
├─11217 nginx: master process /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
├─11218 nginx: worker process
└─11219 nginx: cache manager process

Dec 13 22:40:38 abc nginx[11201]: ...done.
Dec 13 22:40:38 abc systemd[1]: nginx.service: Can't open PID file /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid (yet?) after start: Operation not permitted
Dec 13 22:40:39 abc systemd[1]: Started LSB: nginx init.d dash script for Ubuntu or other *nix..
Dec 13 23:10:22 abc systemd[1]: Reloading LSB: nginx init.d dash script for Ubuntu or other *nix..
Dec 13 23:10:22 abc nginx[11740]: nginx: the configuration file /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf syntax is ok
Dec 13 23:10:22 abc nginx[11740]: nginx: configuration file /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf test is successful
Dec 13 23:10:22 abc nginx[11736]: * Reloading (via HUP) Nginx Server...
Dec 13 23:10:22 abc nginx[11736]: ...fail!
Dec 13 23:10:22 abc systemd[1]: nginx.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=7/NOTRUNNING

Will be very helpful if you could update the script to support "reload" on Ubuntu 20.04.
BTW, no issue with "restart".
Thank you.

The script should exit status calls according to: http://refspecs.linuxbase.org/LSB_3.1.1/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/iniscrptact.html

I've been trying to configure nginx for days, came across your script and got that.

I'm using Nginx 1.5.10 on Ubuntu 13.10 and I have compiled Nginx with the following options in my Ansible playbook:

downloads: /home/user/downloads

• name: run configure nginx with naxsi
  command: ./configure --add-module={{ downloads }}/naxsi/naxsi_src/ --prefix=/usr/local/nginx --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --user={{ nginx_user }} --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --without-mail_pop3_module --without-mail_smtp_module --without-mail_imap_module --without-http_uwsgi_module --without-http_scgi_module chdir={{ downloads }}nginx/

After uploading your init script to /etc/init.d/nginx and making sure the permissions are 755 with root/root I still don't have permissions to execute nginx.

• name: upload nginx init script
  copy: src=./roles/nginx/files/nginx.sh
  dest=/etc/init.d/nginx
  owner=root
  group=root
  mode=0755

I tried to solve it changing a few variables in your script:

PIDSPATH=/var/run instead of /usr/local/nginx/logs
NGINX_CONF_FILE="/etc/nginx/nginx.conf" instead of "/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf"

But still the same problem. Any ideas?