Linux – Difference in sites-available vs sites-enabled vs conf.d directories (Nginx)

configurationlinuxnginxUbuntuweb-server

I have some experience using linux but none using nginx. I have been tasked with researching load-balancing options for an application server.

I have used apt-get to install nginx and all seems fine.

I have a couple of questions.

What is the difference between the sites-available folder and the conf.d folder. Both of those folders were INCLUDED in the default configuration setup for nginx. Tutorials use both. What are they for and what is the best practice?

What is the sites-enabled folder used for? How do I use it?

The default configuration references a www-data user? Do I have to create that user? How do I give that user optimal permissions for running nginx?

Best Answer

The sites-* folders are managed by nginx_ensite and nginx_dissite. For Apache httpd users who find this with a search, the equivalents is a2ensite/a2dissite.

The sites-available folder is for storing all of your vhost configurations, whether or not they're currently enabled.

The sites-enabled folder contains symlinks to files in the sites-available folder. This allows you to selectively disable vhosts by removing the symlink.

conf.d does the job, but you have to move something out of the folder, delete it, or make changes to it when you need to disable something. The sites-* folder abstraction makes things a little more organized and allows you to manage them with separate support scripts.

(unless you're like me, and one of many debian admins who just managed the symlinks directly, not knowing about the scripts...)

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Purpose of Debian “sites-available” and “sites-enabled” directories

sites-available contains the apache config files for each of your sites. For example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName site.mysite.com
  ServerAdmin my@email.com

  DirectoryIndex index.php
  DocumentRoot /home/user/public_html/site.mysite.com/public

  LogLevel warn
  ErrorLog /home/user/public_html/site.mysite.com/logs/error.log
  CustomLog /home/user/public_html/site.mysite.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

When you want to add a new site (for example, site.mysite.com), you add it here, and use:

a2ensite site.mysite.com

To enable the site. Once the site is enabled, a symlink to the config file is placed in the sites-enabled directory, indicating that the site is enabled.

Linux FHS: /srv vs /var … where do I put stuff

This stems from LSB which says "/var contains variable data files. This includes spool directories and files, administrative and logging data, and transient and temporary files." but says this for /srv: "/srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system."

SuSE was one of the first disto's that I used that kept webroot's in /srv - typically Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL use /var/www - but also be aware that if you install a web application using yum or apt then they will likely end up in /usr/share. Also the packaging guidelines for Fedora say that a "package, once installed and configured by a user, can use /srv as a location for data. The package simply must not do this out of the box".

On balanced reflection I would say keep to /var/www - or you can do both by making /var/www a symlink to /srv/www. I know that on oracle RDBMS systems that I build I often create /u01 /u02 etc as symlinks to /home/oracle. The reason for this is that many DBA's expect to find things in /u01 and many others expect /home/oracle. The same can be said of Sysadmins in general - some will instinctively look in /var/www and some in /srv/www while others like myself will grep the apache config for the DocumentRoot.

Hope this provides some guidance for you.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Purpose of Debian “sites-available” and “sites-enabled” directories

Linux FHS: /srv vs /var … where do I put stuff

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