How to make a modification take affect without restarting nginx?

Apache has a graceful option which can scan for modification in http.conf without restarting Apache. What about nginx?

Solution 1:

nginx supports the following signals :

TERM, INT - Quick shutdown
QUIT - Graceful shutdown
HUP - Configuration reload: Start the new worker processes with a new configuration, Gracefully shutdown the old worker processes
USR1 - Reopen the log files
USR2 - Upgrade Executable on the fly
WINCH - Gracefully shutdown the worker processes

HUP is what you are looking for, so sudo kill -HUP pid (nginx pid)

source : http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html

Solution 2:

Use nginx -s reload

Solution 3:

Usually nginx's init-script has reload action, i.e:

• Linux /etc/init.d/nginx reload
• FreeBSD /usr/local/etc/rc.d/nginx reload