Cheat Sheet for Installing and Configuring Nginx over HTTPS

Introduction

I use Nginx in my workflow to serve Flask APIs, for network administrators Nginx installation is a simple task. However, for programmers and APIs developers it can be complicated. In this article, I summarized the commands needed to install and set up Nginx over HTTPS.

Nginx Installation

To install Nginx run these codes successively.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.21.1.tar.gz

$ tar -zxvf nginx-1.21.1.tar.gz

$ cd nginx-1.21.1

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

$ sudo apt-get install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev

$ ./configure --sbin-path=/usr/bin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --with-pcre --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_v2_module

$ sudo make

$ sudo make install

$ sudo touch /lib/systemd/system/nginx.service

Paste the following code inside nginx.service

[Unit]
Description=The NGINX HTTP and reverse proxy server
After=syslog.target network-online.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/nginx.pid
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/nginx -t
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nginx
ExecReload=/usr/bin/nginx -s reload
ExecStop=/bin/kill -s QUIT $MAINPID
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Starting Nginx

$ sudo systemctl start nginx
$ systemctl status nginx

Check if it is working

$ sudo nginx -t

The config file is in this location

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Example config file

events{}

http {
  
  server {
    
    listen 80;
    server_name www.example.com
    location /{
    return 200 "Welcome!"
    }
  }
}

Setting up HTTPS

(To set up HTTPS a domain name is needed and be set like the example above)

We will be using certbot to obtain SSL certificate

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
$ sudo apt-get uptade
$ sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx

Check if it is installed correctly

$ certbot --help

to install the certificate run the following command and follow the instructions

$ sudo certbot --nginx

If everything ran correctly you will be greeted with

Congrationations! you have successfuly enabled HTTPS

That’s it, happy coding!