As NGINX is written in C, GNU C Compiler (GCC) is recommended to build this. So, make sure you have gcc installed on your box. In addition to this, make sure that PATH contains essential build tools, such as make.

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

NGNIX provides options to customize/optimize the compilation and linking done by the C compiler. You could also specify a C compiler and preprocessor that is not in PATH:

NGINX can use libatomic_ops for memory update operations. The library allows atomic updates, thus removing the lock handling involved in accessing shared memory. You can install the required package and use it with the --with-libatomic configuration parameter. Optionally, you can also download the library from https://github.com/ivmai/libatomic_ops and point to it using the --with-libatomic configuration parameter.

Linux offers asynchronous I/O (AIO). This allows applications to overlap I/O operations with other processing, thus enabling better utilization of resources. NGINX can use this by using the --with-file-aio configuration parameter.

$ sudo apt-get install libaio1 libatomic-ops libatomic-ops-dev

NGINX-embedded Perl (ngx_http_perl_module) requires Perl to be installed on your box. The module can be used to build Perl-based configurations in NGINX configuration files. You could also download/build the Perl binary from http://www.perl.org/ and point to it using the --with-perl parameter. Perl modules, used in configurations, can be located with --with-perl modules configuration parameters.

$ sudo apt-get install perl

$ apt-cache search geo::ipfree

The NGINX HTTP rewrite (ngx_http_rewite_module) module requires the support of the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library. You could install the package, or you could download the sources from http://www.pcre.org/ and point to it using the --with-pcre configuration parameter. Additional parameters can be passed with the --with-pcre-opt argument; they are passed to the PCRE library.

$ sudo apt-get install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev

NGINX provides strong cryptography using SSL and TLS protocols. This requires the OpenSSL package to be available on your box. Optionally, you could download the OpenSSL source from http://www.openssl.org/ and point to it using the --with-openssl option. Additional parameters can be passed with the --with-openssl-opt argument; they are passed to the OpenSSL library.

$ sudo apt-get install openssl libssl-dev

NGINX, by default, does not enable the SSL module. It can be enabled using the –with-http_ssl_module configuration.

NGINX can compress HTTP responses in gzip. In order to do this, it requires the support of the Zlib library. You could either install the package or download the sources from http://www.zlib.net/ and point to it using the --with-zlib configuration parameter.

$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g zlib1g-dev

NGINX provides options to change default paths, configuration filenames, log files, and so on. It is not mandatory to provide these options. They have a default value, which is used if the option is not specified:

NGINX has an extensive set of features. It can be used as a web server, a web cache, a load balancer, an e-mail proxy, and so on. All these features of NGINX are compiled and configured as modules. Certain modules are enabled by default, while some need to be enabled. Modules should be carefully selected when building a high-performance system to keep a low memory footprint.

NGINX, by default, installs the HTTP module. The HTTP server can be disabled using the --without-http configuration parameter. Along with the HTTP module, NGINX also enables the following modules by default. The modules can be disabled selectively using the specified configuration parameter. Here is a list of a few parameters:

NGINX has the capability to serve as an e-mail proxy. It supports POP3, IMAP, and SMTP protocols along with SSL capabilities. The e-mail modules are disabled by default. They need to be configured with the following parameters:

NGINX is completely modular in nature, which essentially means that you can build your own modules to extend its existing capabilities. The NGINX community has built a large number of third-party modules that can perform various tasks. If you want to use a few of these modules, you need to compile them with the NGINX source. Download the module source and point to the source using the --add-module configure parameter. You can add as many modules as you want.

Now that you know how to configure the available modules in NGINX, you may want to customize the binary as per your needs. While you are enabling/disabling modules, do make a note of all the libraries that NGINX will rely on. For the modules available from the NGINX catalog, it may be a good idea to download the required sources and point to them using correct parameters. The following command configures an NGINX binary:

$ ./configure 
   --prefix=/etc/nginx 
   --user=www-data 
   --group=www-data 
   --without-http_uwsgi_module 
   --without-http_scgi_module 
   --without-http_fastcgi_module 
   --without-http_geo_module 
   --without-http_browser_module 
   --without-http_upstream_keepalive_module 
   --without-http_browser_module 
   --without-http_ssi_module 
   --with-openssl=../openssl-1.0.2a 
   --with-pcre=../pcre-8.36 
   --with-http_ssl_module 
   --with-http_realip_module 
   --with-http_sub_module 
   --with-http_gzip_static_module 
   --with-http_secure_link_module 
   --with-http_stub_status_module 
   --with-libatomic=../libatomic_ops-7.2 
   --with-file-aio

The following output summary lists the libraries used and the NGINX defaults generated. Makefile, which is generated as a result of the preceding code, can be used to build and install the NGINX binary. Here's the output summary of the preceding command:

Configuration summary
 + using PCRE library: ../pcre-8.36
 + using OpenSSL library: ../openssl-1.0.2a
 + md5: using OpenSSL library
 + sha1: using OpenSSL library
 + using system zlib library
 + using libatomic_ops library: ../libatomic_ops-7.2

 nginx path prefix: "/etc/nginx"
 nginx binary file: "/etc/nginx/sbin/nginx"
 nginx configuration prefix: "/etc/nginx/conf"
 nginx configuration file: "/etc/nginx/conf/nginx.conf"
 nginx pid file: "/etc/nginx/logs/nginx.pid"
 nginx error log file: "/etc/nginx/logs/error.log"
 nginx http access log file: "/etc/nginx/logs/access.log"
 nginx http client request body temporary files: "client_body_temp"
 nginx http proxy temporary files: "proxy_temp"