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+<!--
+  Copyright (C) Nginx, Inc.
+  -->
+
+<!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM "../../../dtd/article.dtd">
+
+<article name="Beginner’s Guide"
+         link="/en/docs/beginners_guide.html"
+         lang="en"
+         rev="1">
+
+<section>
+
+<para>
+This guide gives a basic introduction to nginx and describes some
+simple tasks that can be done with it.
+It is supposed that nginx is already installed on the reader’s machine.
+If it is not, see the <link doc="install.xml"/> page.
+This guide describes how to start and stop nginx, and reload its
+configuration, explains the structure
+of the configuration file and describes how to set up nginx
+to serve out static content, how to configure nginx as a proxy
+server, and how to connect it with a FastCGI application.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+nginx has one master process and several worker processes.
+The main purpose of the master process is to read and evaluate configuration,
+and maintain worker processes.
+Worker processes do actual processing of requests.
+nginx employs event-based model and OS-dependent mechanisms to efficiently
+distribute requests among worker processes.
+The number of worker processes is defined in the configuration file and
+may be fixed for a given configuration or automatically adjusted to the
+number of available CPU cores (see
+<link doc="ngx_core_module.xml" id="worker_processes"/>).
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The way nginx and its modules work is determined in the configuration file.
+By default, the configuration file is named <path>nginx.conf</path>
+and placed in the directory
+<path>/usr/local/nginx/conf</path>,
+<path>/etc/nginx</path>, or
+<path>/usr/local/etc/nginx</path>.
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+
+<section id="control" name="Starting, Stopping, and Reloading Configuration">
+
+<para>
+To start nginx, run the executable file.
+Once nginx is started, it can be controlled by invoking the executable
+with the <literal>-s</literal> parameter.
+Use the following syntax:
+<programlisting>
+nginx -s <i>signal</i>
+</programlisting>
+Where <i>signal</i> may be one of the following:
+<list type="bullet">
+<listitem>
+<literal>stop</literal>&mdash;fast shutdown
+</listitem>
+<listitem>
+<literal>quit</literal>&mdash;graceful shutdown
+</listitem>
+<listitem>
+<literal>reload</literal>&mdash;reloading the configuration file
+</listitem>
+<listitem>
+<literal>reopen</literal>&mdash;reopening the log files
+</listitem>
+</list>
+For example, to stop nginx processes with waiting for the worker processes
+to finish serving current requests, the following command can be executed:
+<programlisting>
+nginx -s quit
+</programlisting>
+<note>This command should be executed under the same user that
+started nginx.</note>
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Changes made in the configuration file
+will not be applied until the command to reload configuration is
+sent to nginx or it is restarted.
+To reload configuration, execute:
+<programlisting>
+nginx -s reload
+</programlisting>
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Once the master process receives the signal to reload configuration,
+it checks the syntax validity
+of the new configuration file and tries to apply the configuration provided
+in it.
+If this is a success, the master process starts new worker processes
+and sends messages to old worker processes, requesting them to
+shut down.
+Otherwise, the master process rolls back the changes and
+continues to work with the old configuration.
+Old worker processes, receiving a command to shut down,
+stop accepting new connections and continue to service current requests until
+all such requests are serviced.
+After that, the old worker processes exit.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+A signal may also be sent to nginx processes with the help of Unix tools
+such as the <command>kill</command> utility.
+In this case a signal is sent directly to a process with a given process ID.
+The process ID of the nginx master process is written, by default, to the
+<path>nginx.pid</path> in the directory
+<path>/usr/local/nginx/logs</path> or
+<path>/var/run</path>.
+For example, if the master process ID is 1628, to send the QUIT signal
+resulting in nginx’s graceful shutdown, execute:
+<programlisting>
+kill -s QUIT 1628
+</programlisting>
+For getting the list of all running nginx processes, the <command>ps</command>
+utility may be used, for example, in the following way:
+<programlisting>
+ps -ax | grep nginx
+</programlisting>
+For more information on sending signals to nginx, see
+<link doc="control.xml"/>.
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+
+<section id="conf_structure" name="Configuration File’s Structure">
+
+<para>
+nginx consists of modules which are controlled by directives specified
+in the configuration file.
+Directives are divided into simple directives and block directives.
+A simple directive consists of the name and parameters separated by spaces
+and ends with a semicolon (<literal>;</literal>).
+A block directive has the same structure as a simple directive, but
+instead of the semicolon it ends with a set of additional instructions
+surrounded by braces (<literal>{</literal> and <literal>}</literal>).
+If a block directive can have other directives inside braces,
+it is called a context (examples:
+<link doc="ngx_core_module.xml" id="events"/>,
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="http"/>,
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="server"/>,
+and
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="location"/>).
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Directives placed in the configuration file outside
+of any contexts are considered to be in the
+<link doc="ngx_core_module.xml">main</link> context.
+The <literal>events</literal> and <literal>http</literal> directives
+reside in the <literal>main</literal> context, <literal>server</literal>
+in <literal>http</literal>, and <literal>location</literal> in
+<literal>server</literal>.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The rest of a line after the <literal>#</literal> sign is considered a comment.
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+
+<section id="static" name="Serving Static Content">
+
+<para>
+An important web server task is serving out
+files (such as images or static HTML pages).
+You will implement an example where, depending on the request,
+files will be served from different local directories: <path>/data/www</path>
+(which may contain HTML files) and <path>/data/images</path>
+(containing images).
+This will require editing of the configuration file and setting up of a
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="server"/>
+block inside the <link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="http"/>
+block with two <link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="location"/>
+blocks.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+First, create the <path>/data/www</path> directory and put an
+<path>index.html</path> file with any text content into it and
+create the <path>/data/images</path> directory and place some
+images in it.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Next, open the configuration file.
+The default configuration file already includes several examples of
+the <literal>server</literal> block, mostly commented out.
+For now comment out all such blocks and start a new
+<literal>server</literal> block:
+<programlisting>
+http {
+    server {
+    }
+}
+</programlisting>
+Generally, the configuration file may include several
+<literal>server</literal> blocks
+<link doc="http/request_processing.xml">distinguished</link> by ports on which
+they <link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="listen">listen</link> to
+and by
+<link doc="http/server_names.xml">server names</link>.
+Once nginx decides which <literal>server</literal> processes a request,
+it tests the URI specified in the request’s header against the parameters of the
+<literal>location</literal> directives defined inside the
+<literal>server</literal> block.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Add the following <literal>location</literal> block to the
+<literal>server</literal> block:
+<programlisting>
+location / {
+    root /data/www;
+}
+</programlisting>
+This <literal>location</literal> block specifies the
+“<path>/</path>” prefix compared with the URI from the request.
+For matching requests, the URI will be added to the path specified in the
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="root"/>
+directive, that is, to <path>/data/www</path>,
+to form the path to the requested file on the local file system.
+If there are several matching <literal>location</literal> blocks nginx
+selects the one with the longest prefix.
+The <literal>location</literal> block above provides the shortest
+prefix, of length one,
+and so only if all other <literal>location</literal>
+blocks fail to provide a match, this block will be used.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Next, add the second <literal>location</literal> block:
+<programlisting>
+location /images/ {
+    root /data;
+}
+</programlisting>
+It will be a match for requests starting with <literal>/images/</literal>
+(<literal>location /</literal> also matches such requests,
+but has shorter prefix).
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The resulting configuration of the <literal>server</literal> block should
+look like this:
+<programlisting>
+server {
+    location / {
+        root /data/www;
+    }
+
+    location /images/ {
+        root /data;
+    }
+}
+</programlisting>
+This is already a working configuration of a server that listens
+on the standard port 80 and is accessible on the local machine at
+<literal>http://localhost/</literal>.
+In response to requests with URIs starting with <literal>/images/</literal>,
+the server will send files from the <path>/data/images</path> directory.
+For example, in response to the
+<literal>http://localhost/images/example.png</literal> request nginx will
+send the <path>/data/images/example.png</path> file.
+If such file does not exist, nginx will send a response
+indicating the 404 error.
+Requests with URIs not starting with <literal>/images/</literal> will be
+mapped onto the <path>/data/www</path> directory.
+For example, in response to the
+<literal>http://localhost/some/example.html</literal> request nginx will
+send the <path>/data/www/some/example.html</path> file.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+To apply the new configuration, start nginx if it is not yet started or
+send the <literal>reload</literal> signal to the nginx’s master process,
+by executing:
+<programlisting>
+nginx -s reload
+</programlisting>
+</para>
+
+<para>
+<note>
+In case something does not work as expected, you may try to find out
+the reason in <path>access.log</path> and
+<path>error.log</path> files in the directory
+<path>/usr/local/nginx/logs</path> or
+<path>/var/log/nginx</path>.
+</note>
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+
+<section id="proxy" name="Setting Up a Simple Proxy Server">
+
+<para>
+One of the frequent uses of nginx is setting it up as a proxy server, which
+means a server that receives requests, passes them to the proxied servers,
+retrieves responses from them, and sends them to the clients.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+We will configure a basic proxy server, which serves requests of
+images with files from the local directory and sends all other requests to a
+proxied server.
+In this example, both servers will be defined on a single nginx instance.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+First, define the proxied server by adding one more <literal>server</literal>
+block to the nginx’s configuration file with the following contents:
+<programlisting>
+server {
+    listen 8080;
+    root /data/up1;
+
+    location / {
+    }
+}
+</programlisting>
+This will be a simple server that listens on the port 8080
+(previously, the <literal>listen</literal> directive has not been specified
+since the standard port 80 was used) and maps
+all requests to the <path>/data/up1</path> directory on the local
+file system.
+Create this directory and put the <path>index.html</path> file into it.
+Note that the <literal>root</literal> directive is placed in the
+<literal>server</literal> context.
+Such <literal>root</literal> directive is used when the
+<literal>location</literal> block selected for serving a request does not
+include own <literal>root</literal> directive.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Next, use the server configuration from the previous section
+and modify it to make it a proxy server configuration.
+In the first <literal>location</literal> block, put the
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_proxy_module.xml" id="proxy_pass"/>
+directive with the protocol, name and port of the proxied server specified
+in the parameter (in our case, it is <literal>http://localhost:8080</literal>):
+<programlisting>
+server {
+    location / {
+        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
+    }
+
+    location /images/ {
+        root /data;
+    }
+}
+</programlisting>
+</para>
+
+<para>
+We will modify the second <literal>location</literal>
+block, which currently maps requests with the <literal>/images/</literal>
+prefix to the files under the <path>/data/images</path> directory,
+to make it match the requests of images with typical file extensions.
+The modified <literal>location</literal> block looks like this:
+<programlisting>
+location ~ \.(gif|jpg|png)$ {
+    root /data/images;
+}
+</programlisting>
+The parameter is a regular expression matching all URIs ending
+with <path>.gif</path>, <path>.jpg</path>, or <path>.png</path>.
+A regular expression should be preceded with <literal>~</literal>.
+The corresponding requests will be mapped to the <path>/data/images</path>
+directory.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+When nginx selects a <literal>location</literal> block to serve a request
+it first checks <link doc="http/ngx_http_core_module.xml" id="location"/>
+directives that specify prefixes, remembering <literal>location</literal>
+with the longest prefix, and then checks regular expressions.
+If there is a match with a regular expression, nginx picks this
+<literal>location</literal> or, otherwise, it picks the one remembered earlier.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The resulting configuration of a proxy server will look like this:
+<programlisting>
+server {
+    location / {
+        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/;
+    }
+
+    location ~ \.(gif|jpg|png)$ {
+        root /data/images;
+    }
+}
+</programlisting>
+This server will filter requests ending with <path>.gif</path>,
+<path>.jpg</path>, or <path>.png</path>
+and map them to the <path>/data/images</path> directory (by adding URI to the
+<literal>root</literal> directive’s parameter) and pass all other requests
+to the proxied server configured above.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+To apply new configuration, send the <literal>reload</literal> signal to
+nginx as described in the previous sections.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+There are many <link doc="http/ngx_http_proxy_module.xml">more</link>
+directives that may be used to further configure a proxy connection.
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+
+<section id="fastcgi" name="Setting Up FastCGI Proxying">
+
+<para>
+nginx can be used to route requests to FastCGI servers which run
+applications built with various frameworks and programming languages
+such as PHP.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The most basic nginx configuration to work with a FastCGI server
+includes using the
+<link doc="http/ngx_http_fastcgi_module.xml" id="fastcgi_pass"/>
+directive instead of the <literal>proxy_pass</literal> directive,
+and <link doc="http/ngx_http_fastcgi_module.xml" id="fastcgi_param"/>
+directives to set parameters passed to a FastCGI server.
+Suppose the FastCGI server is accessible on <literal>localhost:9000</literal>.
+Taking the proxy configuration from the previous section as a basis,
+replace the <literal>proxy_pass</literal> directive with the
+<literal>fastcgi_pass</literal> directive and change the parameter to
+<literal>localhost:9000</literal>.
+In PHP, the <literal>SCRIPT_FILENAME</literal> parameter is used for
+determining the script name, and the <literal>QUERY_STRING</literal>
+parameter is used to pass request parameters.
+The resulting configuration would be:
+<programlisting>
+server {
+    location / {
+        fastcgi_pass  localhost:9000;
+        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
+        fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING    $query_string;
+    }
+
+    location ~ \.(gif|jpg|png)$ {
+        root /data/images;
+    }
+}
+</programlisting>
+This will set up a server that will route all requests except for
+requests for static images to the proxied server operating on
+<literal>localhost:9000</literal> through the FastCGI protocol.
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+</article>