Nginx is one a very famous, open-source web server application that we can also use as a reverse proxy, cache server as well as a load balancer among other things. It is a powerful, lightweight application & also uses very few resources.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Ngnix on CentOS & RHEL servers. There are two ways with which we can install the Nginx on CentOS & RHEL, either using EPEL repositories or using the Nginx official repositories.
Recommended Read: How to install NGINX on Ubuntu
Also Read: Scheduling CRON Jobs with Crontab for Beginners
Install Nginx on CentOS/RHEL using the EPEL repository
Nginx packages are not maintained on the default CentOS/RHEL repositories & are available on the EPEL repositories. So we need to install EPEL repositories on it first.
We have already discussed in detail how we can install the EPEL repository on CentOS in our tutorial HERE. You can also run the following
CentOS/RHEL 6/7
# yum install epel-release
CentOS/RHEL 8
# dnf install epel-release
Once the EPEL repository has been installed, we can then install nginx with the following command,
# yum install nginx
Once the nginx is installed, we can then start the nginx service with the following command,
# systemctl start nginx
To enable the server at boot time, run the following command,
# systemctl enable nginx
When the nginx service has started, we can access the default nginx webpage with the system IP address from a browser,
http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_THE_SERVER
Install Nginx on CentOS using the Official Nginx repository
For enabling the official Nginx repositories, we need to create the repository files for nginx repos. Create a file ‘/etc/yum.repos.d/ngnix.repo’ & enter the following details,
# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo
[nginx]
name=nginx repo
baseurl=https://nginx.org/packages/$OS/$releaserver/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
Here, we need to update the following values as per the OS type & version number, i.e.,
OS – rhel or centos
releaseserver – 6, 7 or 8
For example, the entry for Centos 7 would be,
[nginx]
name=nginx repo
baseurl=https://nginx.org/packages/centos/7/basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
Similarly, replace Centos with rhel for rhel 7 Nginx repository. Now, all we need is to install Nginx with the following command,
# yum install nginx
Now, start the nginx service & access the default webpage.
This completes our tutorial on how to install nginx on CentOS/RHEL. You can also check our tutorial on how to host multiple websites on Nginx HERE & if you have any questions/queries, please do let us know using the comment box below.
