Basic Nginx configuration for Inspections project.

nginx.conf

# One process because we only have one core.
worker_processes 1;

# The Web server should run as a separate user
# because if it is compromised, it won't have
# permissions to do evil things.
user www-data;

# Where to keep the process id.
# /var/run is standard.
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

# How to handle lots of events, e.g., requests.
# We use epoll and can handle up to 4096
# concurrent connections. This is a lot.
events {
    worker_connections 4096;
    use epoll;
    multi_accept on;
}

# Now, the block where we do server things.
http {

    # Some basic nginx boilerplate.
    # Know what legal mimetypes are.
    include /etc/nginx/mime.types;

    # Set a default mimetype.
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    # Set up an access and error log.
    # Logging is good.
    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    # Basic configuration you can cut-and-paste
    # for your next project.
    sendfile on;
    keepalive_timeout 15;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;
    proxy_next_upstream error;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;
    server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;

    # Okay, now a server block. This is
    # where it starts to get good.
    server {

        # Listen on port 80.
        listen 80;

        # For requests to our domain name.
        server_name inspections.jeremybowers.com;
    
        # Don't send anything bigger than 50mb.
        # This is not a problem.
        client_max_body_size 50M;

        # Set the filesystem root in case we need to
        # serve a flat file. This will be important
        # later.
        root /var/www/inspections;

        # A location block parses an URL path.
        location ^~ /admin/ {

            # If we're looking at /admin/, don't
            # send the request to Varnish, or we
            # will cache whichever logged in user
            # first hit the page. This is bad (tm).
            # Send this request straight to uWSGI.
            uwsgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8002;
            include /etc/nginx/uwsgi_params;
        }

        location / {

            # Otherwise, send the requests through
            # to Varnish on port 8000.
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
        }
    }

    # NEXT.
    # Now, listen on 8001, which is where Varnish
    # will send requests which fail to find something
    # in the cache.
    server {

        # Listen on 8001.
        listen 8001;

        # Listen for our domain.
        server_name inspections.jeremybowers.com;

        # Blah-blah-blah.
        client_max_body_size 50M;
        root /var/www/inspections;

        # Okay, back to interesting.
        location / {

            # Send through to uWSGI, like we
            # did for /admin/ URLs above.
            # However, since we're a Varnish backend
            # now, these responses can be cached.
            # Caching is awesome.
            uwsgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8002;
            include /etc/nginx/uwsgi_params;
        }
    }
}