Install NGINX on CentOS 6/7

2 min readDec 22, 2017

CentOS is pretty comfortable OS which gives extra support to developers, especially such as brew yum etc, over Ubuntu.

Step 1: Installing NGINX on OS

a. We need to add the CentOS EPEL package so that we can install NGINX.

sudo amazon-linux-extras install epel

note: If you are experiencing any issues follow this link

b. Now that our repository is installed on the server, we can now use yum to install NGINX, like so:

sudo yum -y install nginx

c. Start NGINX.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Step 2: Create a new user for the webspace

Before doing anything, we need to create a UNIX user for your web space.

a. Add the username

sudo useradd phoenix

b. Add the password

sudo passwd phoenix

Step 3: Create a new user for the webspace

Now it’s time to get it working for your domain. We need to create the directory that will act as the DocumentRoot for this website. It is a good idea to follow a standard naming convention if you are hosting multiple websites

a. Create a directory

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/nginxsite.com/public_html

b. Open the file

sudo vim /var/www/nginxsite.com/public_html/index.html

c. Enter the username, password

sudo chown -R phoenix:phoenix /var/www/nginxsite.com/public_html

d. Use the chmod command

sudo chmod 755 /var/www/nginxsite.com/public_html

e. Enter two commands to create directory available and enabled

sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-available 
sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

f. Open the conf file

vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf 
vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/nginxsite.com.conf
vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/nginxsite.com.conf

g. list the files

ls -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/nginxsite.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/nginxsite.com.conf(OR)> cd sites-enabled
> sudo ln -s ../sites-available/nginxsite.conf .
> ls -l

Step 4: Hurray! It’s time to start your NGINX server

a. Restart the Nginx service

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

b. Open the conf file and make changes as per your requirement

vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

c. Restart the service

sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Free hacks for you :

#hack 1: It is highly recommended to turn of Apache on your OS, before proceeding to install NGINX.

#hack 2: It’s good practise to test your NGINX server on every change that you make in *.conf file with this command,

sudo service nginx -t

#hack 3: To see the running process(on respective ports) run the below command

sudo netstat -lntup

#hack 4: Check logs

sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.logsudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log

Reference links:

1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42303401/nginx-will-not-start-address-already-in-use
2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32489902/starting-nginx-gives-org-freedesktop-policykit1-error
3. Remove trailing slash issue : https://serverfault.com/a/870620/455085
4. Install & renew free SSL certificates : https://medium.com/@dearsikandarkhan/get-free-ssl-certificates-and-configure-https-f710dbc5e269

Happy exploration.
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