After installing nginx with Passenger support in '/opt', why won't it start from 'init.d'?

I went through a tutorial http://craiccomputing.blogspot.com/2010/10/passenger-3-nginx-and-rvm-on-mac-os-x.html and everything was ok. There were no errors.

Nginx with Passenger support was successfully installed.

The Nginx configuration file (/opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf)
must contain the correct configuration options in order for Phusion Passenger
to function correctly.

This installer has already modified the configuration file for you! The
following configuration snippet was inserted:

  http {
      ...
      passenger_root /home/alex/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/passenger-3.0.14;
      passenger_ruby /home/alex/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-1.9.3-p194/ruby;
      ...
  }

After you start Nginx, you are ready to deploy any number of Ruby on Rails
applications on Nginx.

However I can't start it.

alex@ubuntu:~$ sh -x /etc/init.d/nginx start
sh: 0: Can't open /etc/init.d/nginx

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start
sudo: /etc/init.d/nginx: command not found

The directory opt/nginx exists and there are files in it. Localhost:80 doesn't work either.

Any suggestions?

Solution 1:

The usual way of installing a Rails + NGINX + Passenger + RVM setup usually involves nginx being placed in /opt/nginx, but it in fact doesn't create the init.d startup file. This blog post shows how you can easily grab one from Linode:

wget -O init-deb.sh https://www.linode.com/docs/assets/660-init-deb.sh
sudo mv init-deb.sh /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

For posterity, here is the script from Linode:

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          nginx
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description:       starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/opt/nginx/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
        . /etc/default/nginx
fi

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
                /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
                /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  reload)
          echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
          start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile     /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
              --exec $DAEMON
          echo "$NAME."
          ;;
      *)
            N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
            echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
            exit 1
            ;;
    esac

    exit 0

One thing to look out for: if you've changed your nginx.pid location (defaults to /opt/nginx/log, I changed mine to /var/run), you'll need to change it in this file. Near the top, just declare it as a variable:

PIDPATH=/var/run/$NAME.pid

And replace anywhere that has the path to the pid with $PIDPATH. (Even if you're keeping the original path, this makes the script more readable).

Solution 2:

The normal way to install nginx is via apt-get (or Synaptic or SW Center) and that doesn't put anything in /opt, AFAIK. In that case, you can stop/start it by simply issuing:

sudo service nginx start|stop|restart (etc)

If your nginx installed itself in /opt, I doubt it would have touched the /etc/init.d directory...

Solution 3:

I recommend using the Brightbox PPA mentioned in the Brightbox Wiki. This enables all normal service handing like service nginx start or /etc/init.d/nginx start out of the box.

This works fine for me in precise (12.04 LTS).