Nginx Does not Start

[abdi]

Hello Igor,

I just upgraded my plesk from 10.* to 11.0.9. When I read your manuals, it states that nginx will start fine if I just start in the plesk admin -> services but this is not the case. I get the error below when I try starting it

"Error: Unable to make action: Unable to manage service by nginxmng: Empty error message from utility. ('--enable', 'nginx')"

And when I try starting it from the shell, I get the error message

"Not starting nginx as it is disabled in config"

Please assist me resolve this issue or better still how can I start nginx with this new plesk?

Joseph

 

[Kirill K]

Hello, Joseph!

I just checked upgrade from 10.4.4 to 11.0.9, installation of nginx and starting it from panel - all works without any problems.

Could you provide more details?
1. Initial plesk version
2. Was nginx manually installed on the host before upgrade?
3. Used OS
4. panel logs (/usr/local/psa/admin/logs/panel.log)

 

[abdi]

Nginx Start Issues - Resolved

Hello Kirill,
Thanks for your quick response.

I got to solve the problem I was facing with nginx not starting by running the command:

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/nginxmng --enable

Of course the above is not documented anywhere yet on plesk 11.* manuals, I just guessed it
Anyways, it worked.

However, correct me if I am wrong ..NGINX on plesk is doing totally nothing really ..It just passes every request to apache, even .html, .css, .jpg, .gif files are still being opened through apache..

Is this true? I looked at /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/conf/last_nginx.conf and I see nothing really substantial that makes nginx useful in it.

 

[SørenE]

abdi >> you are right, there is nothing set in nginx config files bin true them all

So i doubt that its doing any thing right now, besides using cpu power, and some memory

Just did a clean install, and havent changed any thing just setup 1 domain to test it out, since im about to get a dedicatet server, and want to be on edge with plesk, and the reason i want plesk 11 is the nginx, since it will make my site load alot faster, if it worked

Tryed out a manual apache nginx before i got a trial of plesk, and i know how fast the site loaded there, so hope Parallels is looking ad it right now.

 

[abdi]

I just disabled my nginx on plesk 11 since its useless for now. Till that time when it becomes usefull.

 

[paulieG]

Hi,

To be fair Parallels have carefully worded their marketing for Nginx, they've promoted it as a way of reducing server load and increasing concurrency, not as a way of speeding up your sites. Basically its because a Apache processes will be blocked less.

Its not a difficult task to reconfigure the nginx template within Plesk 11 to add some rules to get Nginx to handle static content (I'll be doing it this afternoon), and the addition of mod_aclr2 is a much better solution for the situations Nginx doesn't know if it can handle.

I'm hopeful that over time we can build up a very nice nginx configuration,

Paul.

 

[IgorG]

Right. Nginx in Plesk works as reverse proxy in front of Apache. Nginx is used for Cache static files (HTML, CSS), Proxy dynamic content (PHP, etc). It is efficient for multiple and slow (i.e. mobile devices) connections (low RAM). Nginx allows to reduce lifetime of Apache processes, thus lower Apache RAM consuming.

More details can be found here http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-administrator-guide/70837.htm

 

[SørenE]

paulieG, where in plesk can you configure Nginx? just to get a hint so i can look in to it.

I know it works as a proxy, and thats more then enuf, since nginx aint the best http server for handling php, so its the best option to go with if you got a CMS system running, did read alot about it to be sure what solution wood be the best.

I actualy might be wrong, it looks like nginx is working, all add some log files, but looks like both apache and nginx is loading the same stuff up.

Im not a master of log files so might be another person maybe paulieG that can tell me if im total lost

 

[paulieG]

You can customise the nginx configuration files here :

/usr/local/psa/admin/conf/templates

There is guidance on customising these files here : http://download1.parallels.com/Ples...nistration-guide/index.htm?fileName=71145.htm

--

As we've said current setup is that nginx proxies everything to Apache and then if Apache tells it its static content then it will serve the file itself, if not it just serves whatever Apache gives it.

This isn't the way most people setup nginx, but it is the safest approach, anything else runs the risk of having nginx serve files that your Apache configuration would prevent, but setting it up so that Nginx will serve images, css and js without querying Apache would probably be a good compromise (unless your app is generating these things on the fly).

Paul.

 

[abdi]

Nginx Related

Right. Nginx in Plesk works as reverse proxy in front of Apache. Nginx is used for Cache static files (HTML, CSS), Proxy dynamic content (PHP, etc). It is efficient for multiple and slow (i.e. mobile devices) connections (low RAM). Nginx allows to reduce lifetime of Apache processes, thus lower Apache RAM consuming.

More details can be found here http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-administrator-guide/70837.htm

Igor, tell me plesk has just layed grounds for Nginx so as in future versions it will actually do the Job its meant to do. . free apache from passing on static information to users.

The current default installation of nginx is just a "NAME" that passes every request, both static and dynamic to apache.

And current version is still buggy, recently on of my servers, about 40% of the domain names were showing a certain website on the server "which website is NOT even the default of that IP address".

Disabling nginx restored everything back to normal ...

Ofcourse I figured that virtual hosts have to be rebuilt, but current known commands like /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/httpdmng --reconfigure-all only build apache vhosts, so how do I build nginx config files? NOT documentation on it so far ...

 

[devCUSoft]

paulieG, where in plesk can you configure Nginx? just to get a hint so i can look in to it.

I know it works as a proxy, and thats more then enuf, since nginx aint the best http server for handling php, so its the best option to go with if you got a CMS system running, did read alot about it to be sure what solution wood be the best.

Are your serious? Nginx aint the best server for PHP? Totally wrong it is not only the best, fastest and most secure but you can configure it to whatever you want and with micro cacheing you can best Apache by over 250 times faster in the worst case scenario. On a pure Nginx server which makes Apache look like Turtle on a hot day, PHP flies and you can load full wordpress pages in under .07 seconds as opposed to 7.7 seconds on a fully optimized Apache server.

If I were you I wouldnt make comments about things you obviously have no idea about. That being said even used as proxy like in Plesk 11 you can customize to run a hell of allot faster then the Plesk default directives, just need the experience to know what you are doing.

 

[abdi]

Nginx is quite a fast and light webserver. Infact wordpress.org is using Nginx.

 

[IgorG]

Ofcourse I figured that virtual hosts have to be rebuilt, but current known commands like /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/httpdmng --reconfigure-all only build apache vhosts, so how do I build nginx config files? NOT documentation on it so far ...

I do not understand for which purposes you need nginx config files? As I wrote before nginx is just reverse proxy in front of Apache in Plesk 11 but not independent web server for hosting. Therefore all vhosts configs are served by Apache.

 

[abdi]

Igor, I came up with that theorem because on one of my servers, about 40% of the domain names were showing a certain website on the server "which website is NOT even the default of that IP address".

If this happened on old plesk without nginx, rebuilding the vhosts usually solves the problem. In this case with nginx how do you resolve that problem?

 

[paulieG]

Hi Abdi,

The standard /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/httpdmng --reconfigure-all should be generating new nginx configuration files. Its worked for me in testing.

You also have the following new binaries in /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/ :

[root@vz3001 bin]# ls -lash nginx*
0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 psaadm psaadm 15 Jun 15 13:59 nginx-config -> ../sbin/wrapper
0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 psaadm psaadm 15 Jun 15 13:59 nginx_control -> ../sbin/wrapper
0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 psaadm psaadm 15 Jun 15 13:59 nginxmng -> ../sbin/wrapper
0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 psaadm psaadm 15 Jun 15 13:59 nginx_proxy -> ../sbin/wrapper
[root@vz3001 bin]#

They all respond to --help though I don't recall any of them offering me the ability to just rebuild nginx config files.

Paul.

 

[abdi]

Thanks Paulie for the clarification, Let me dig deeper into my problem of 40% domains showing 1 particular domain content.

 

[paulieG]

I'm quite interested too, I take it this was an upgrade from 10?

Is it only the front page that displays on these sites or do deeper links work? And do you stay on the original host or is it changing?

Paul.

 

[abdi]

Yes, it was an upgrade from 10. So far I have resolved the reported cases by

1. In plesk control panel, I reset the DNS template for the domains that were showing one of the sites on the server. I did the same with the site that was being shown

2. Then I rebuilt the vhosts by /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/httpdmng --reconfigure-all

The server has very many domains and am kinda tied to try checking of all of them 1 by 1 so I am resolving the cases as they report them

 

[paulieG]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply. If you still have domains that could be showing the wrong content use a script to loop through your domains pulling down the front page with curl, then grep for something on the html curl returns for the site thats always showing... voila! List of domains that are wrong!

Paul.