NGINX(8)

💖 NGINX — the manual page, bestie edition 💖

okay so you picked up the NGINX(8) page from the System Manager's Manual and honestly? taste. let's get into it 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

nginx — your HTTP and reverse proxy server, plus a mail proxy server. yeah she does both. multi-hyphenate queen 👑

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nginx [-?hqTtVv] [-c file] [-e file] [-g directives] [-p prefix]
      [-s signal]

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so, nginx — pronounced “engine x”, yes really, that's the whole bit — is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server. she contains multitudes 💅

and the way she's known?? for high performance, stability, a rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. it's giving main character energy with zero drama. iconic, no notes 🌈

the options are as follows:

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -?, -h — print help. she'll tell you what's up 🎀
• -c file — use an alternative configuration file. not feeling the default? pick your own ✨
• -e file — use an alternative error log file. and ooh, there's a special value: stderr, which means the standard error output gets used instead 💜
• -g directives — set global configuration directives. peek at “EXAMPLES” below for the details, i got you 🫶
• -p prefix — set the prefix path. the default value is /usr/share/nginx. periodt.
• -q — suppress non-error messages during configuration testing. quiet mode, lowkey mysterious 🤫
• -s signal — send a signal to the master process. the signal argument can be one of: stop, quit, reopen, reload. here's the matching system signals:
  • stop → SIGTERM
  • quit → SIGQUIT
  • reopen → SIGUSR1
  • reload → SIGHUP
• -T — same as -t, but additionally dumps configuration files to standard output. she's showing her whole hand, and honestly? obsessed 🍓
• -t — do not run, just test the configuration file. nginx checks the config file syntax and then tries to open files referenced in the configuration file, including binding to configured listen addresses. no commitment, just vibes check 🔍
• -V — print the nginx version, compiler version, and configure script parameters. the full resume 💅
• -v — print the nginx version. just the name-drop ✨

---

✨ SIGNALS ✨

the master process of nginx can handle these signals:

• SIGINT, SIGTERM — shut down quickly. no warning, just gone 💀
• SIGHUP — reload configuration, start the new worker process with a new configuration, and gracefully shut down old worker processes. glow-up reload ✨
• SIGQUIT — shut down gracefully. soft launch into the void 🦋
• SIGUSR1 — reopen log files.
• SIGUSR2 — upgrade the nginx executable on the fly. literally changing mid-air, ate 🔥
• SIGWINCH — shut down worker processes gracefully.

and look, while there's no need to explicitly control worker processes normally, they support some signals too:

• SIGTERM — shut down quickly.
• SIGQUIT — shut down gracefully.
• SIGUSR1 — reopen log files.

---

✨ DEBUGGING LOG ✨

to enable a debugging log, reconfigure nginx to build with debugging:

./configure --with-debug ...

and then set the debug level of the error_log:

error_log /path/to/log debug;

it's also possible to enable the debugging for a particular IP address:

events {
        debug_connection 127.0.0.1;
}

---

✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

the NGINX environment variable is used internally by nginx and should not be set directly by the user. hands off, bestie, she handles it herself 🙈

---

✨ FILES ✨

• /run/nginx.pid — contains the process ID of nginx. the contents of this file are not sensitive, so it can be world-readable. she's an open book 🎀
• /etc/nginx/nginx.conf — the main configuration file. the blueprint, the moment ⭐
• /var/log/nginx/error.log — error log file.

---

✨ EXIT STATUS ✨

exit status is 0 on success, or 1 if the command fails. that's the whole vibe check 🫶

---

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

test configuration file ~/mynginx.conf with global directives for PID and quantity of worker processes:

nginx -t -c ~/mynginx.conf \
        -g "pid /var/run/mynginx.pid; worker_processes 2;"

see how clean that is?? chefs kiss 👑 no cap.

---

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

documentation at http://nginx.org/en/docs/.

for questions and technical support, please refer to http://nginx.org/en/support.html.

---

✨ HISTORY ✨

development of nginx started in 2002, with the first public release on October 4, 2004. she's been that girl for literal decades 💜

---

✨ AUTHORS ✨

Igor Sysoev <igor@sysoev.ru>.

this manual page was originally written by Sergey A. Osokin <osa@FreeBSD.org.ru> as a result of compiling many nginx documents from all over the world. the way that's such a labor of love 😭🫶

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from the Debian edition, dated January 21, 2026 — stay iconic, go reload your config, and remember: test with -t before you reload, always 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🌈⭐💜