Reducing the load on a small VPS by 80% in 5 minutes.

In this setup, NGinx will be integrated with Apache (under cPanel) and used to server the static files.

cd /root
wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-0.8.52.tar.gz
wget http://stderr.net/apache/rpaf/download/mod_rpaf-0.6.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-7.9.tar.gz
tar xvzf mod_rpaf-0.6.tar.gz
cd mod_rpaf-0.6
/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs -i -c -n mod_rpaf-2.0.so mod_rpaf-2.0.c
cd /root
tar xvzf pcre-7.9.tar.gz
cd pcre-7.9
./configure
make
make install
cd /root
tar xvzf nginx-0.8.52.tar.gz
cd nginx-0.8.52
./configure --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_gzip_static_module
make
make install

Login to WHM and look for the following route:
Main >> Service Configuration >> Apache Setup > Include Editor > Pre Main Include

Add the following configuration and save, LIST_OF_YOUR_IPS changing the IP you use in your site:

LoadModule rpaf_module modules/mod_rpaf-2.0.so RPAFenable On
# Enable reverse proxy add forward RPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1 LIST_OF_YOUR_IPS
# which ips are forwarding requests to us RPAFsethostname On
# let rpaf update vhost settings
# allows to have the same hostnames as in the "real"
# configuration for the forwarding Apache RPAFheader X-Real-IP
# Allows you to change which header mod_rpaf looks
# for when trying to find the ip the that is forwarding
# our requests

Change the apache port to 81 (tweak settings)
Open whm – tweak settings and find 0.0.0.0:80 and change it to 0.0.0.0.:81

Thank back SSH console and run:

/usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr2 --updatetweaksettings
/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf httpd restart

create automated nginx virtual host creator

touch nginx.sh
chmod 755 nginx.sh
nano nginx.sh

Add this script to nginx.sh

#!/bin/sh
 
cat > "/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf" <<EOF
user  nobody;
# no need for more workers in the proxy mode
worker_processes  1;
 
error_log  logs/error.log info;
 
worker_rlimit_nofile  8192;
 
events {
 worker_connections  512; # you might need to increase this setting for busy servers
 use epoll; #  Linux kernels 2.4.x  change to rtsig
}
 
http {
 server_names_hash_max_size 2048;
 
 include    mime.types;
 default_type  application/octet-stream;
 
 sendfile on;
 tcp_nopush on;
 tcp_nodelay on;
 
 keepalive_timeout  10;
 
 gzip on;
 gzip_min_length  1100;
 gzip_buffers  4 32k;
 gzip_types    text/plain application/x-javascript text/xml text/css;
 ignore_invalid_headers on;
 
 client_header_timeout  3m;
 client_body_timeout 3m;
 send_timeout     3m;
 connection_pool_size  256;
 client_header_buffer_size 4k;
 large_client_header_buffers 4 32k;
 request_pool_size  4k;
 output_buffers   4 32k;
 postpone_output  1460;
 
 include "/usr/local/nginx/conf/vhost.conf";
}
 
EOF
 
/bin/cp /dev/null /usr/local/nginx/conf/vhost.conf
 
cd /var/cpanel/users
for USER in *; do
 for DOMAIN in `cat $USER | grep ^DNS | cut -d= -f2`; do
  IP=`cat $USER|grep ^IP|cut -d= -f2`;
  ROOT=`grep ^$USER: /etc/passwd|cut -d: -f6`;
  echo "Converting $DOMAIN for $USER";
 
  cat >> "/usr/local/nginx/conf/vhost.conf" <<EOF
   server {
  access_log off;
 
  error_log  logs/vhost-error_log warn;
  listen    80;
  server_name  $DOMAIN www.$DOMAIN;
 
  # uncomment location below to make nginx serve static files instead of Apache
  # NOTE this will cause issues with bandwidth accounting as files wont be logged
  #location ~* \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|wmv|avi|mpg|mpeg|mp4|js|css)$ {
  # root   $ROOT/public_html;
  #}
 
  location / {
   proxy_send_timeout   90;
   proxy_read_timeout   90;
 
   proxy_buffer_size    4k;
   # you can increase proxy_buffers here to suppress "an upstream response
   #  is buffered to a temporary file" warning
   proxy_buffers     16 32k;
   proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
   proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
 
   proxy_connect_timeout 30s;
 
   proxy_redirect  http://www.$DOMAIN:81   http://www.$DOMAIN;
   proxy_redirect  http://$DOMAIN:81   http://$DOMAIN;
 
   proxy_pass   http://$IP:81/;
 
   proxy_set_header   Host   \$host;
   proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP  \$remote_addr;
   proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For \$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  }
 }
EOF
 done
done

then run it:
./nginx.sh

Check the configuration

/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -t

Until now only the managing nginx connections, but is not serving static content. For the latter you must edit the following file:

nano /usr/local/nginx/conf/vhost.conf

Remove the 3 # signs of the following lines:

#location ~* \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|wmv|avi|mpg|mpeg|mp4|js|css)$ {
# root /home/myweb/public_html;
#}

so the final configuration will looks like

location ~* \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|wmv|avi|mpg|mpeg|mp4|js|css)$ {
root /home/myweb/public_html;
}

Configure nginx startup scripts

touch /etc/init.d/nginx
chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
nano /etc/init.d/nginx

 

Now add inside the following content

#!/bin/sh
#
# nginx - this script starts and stops the nginx daemin
# Taken from http://www.hikaro.com
# chkconfig:   - 85 15
# description:  Nginx is an HTTP(S) server, HTTP(S) reverse \
#               proxy and IMAP/POP3 proxy server
# processname: nginx
# config:      /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
# pidfile:     /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid
 
# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
 
# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network
 
# Check that networking is up.
[ "$NETWORKING" = "no" ] && exit 0
 
nginx="/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx"
prog=$(basename $nginx)
 
NGINX_CONF_FILE="/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf"
 
lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/nginx
 
start() {
    [ -x $nginx ] || exit 5
    [ -f $NGINX_CONF_FILE ] || exit 6
    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
    daemon $nginx -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile
    return $retval
}
 
stop() {
    echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
    killproc $prog -QUIT
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile
    return $retval
}
 
restart() {
    configtest || return $?
    stop
    start
}
 
reload() {
    configtest || return $?
    echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
    killproc $nginx -HUP
    RETVAL=$?
    echo
}
 
force_reload() {
    restart
}
 
configtest() {
  $nginx -t -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
}
 
rh_status() {
    status $prog
}
 
rh_status_q() {
    rh_status >/dev/null 2>&1
}
 
case "$1" in
    start)
        rh_status_q && exit 0
        $1
        ;;
    stop)
        rh_status_q || exit 0
        $1
        ;;
    restart|configtest)
        $1
        ;;
    reload)
        rh_status_q || exit 7
        $1
        ;;
    force-reload)
        force_reload
        ;;
    status)
        rh_status
        ;;
    condrestart|try-restart)
        rh_status_q || exit 0
            ;;
    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|condrestart|try-restart|reload|force-reload|configtest}"
        exit 2
esac


test the scripts:

/etc/init.d/nginx restart
ps aux | grep nginx


add nginx as autostart deamon

/sbin/chkconfig nginx on
/sbin/chkconfig --list | grep nginx


Enjoy speed of nginx

cd /root
wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-0.8.52.tar.gz
wget http://stderr.net/apache/rpaf/download/mod_rpaf-0.6.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-7.9.tar.gz
tar xvzf mod_rpaf-0.6.tar.gz
cd mod_rpaf-0.6
/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs -i -c -n mod_rpaf-2.0.so mod_rpaf-2.0.c
cd /root
tar xvzf pcre-7.9.tar.gz
cd pcre-7.9
./configure
make
make install
cd /root
tar xvzf nginx-0.8.52.tar.gz
cd nginx-0.8.52
./configure --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_gzip_static_module
make
make install