/nginx-custom-build

Custom version of Nginx, built with Shibboleth (FastCGI authorizer) support, HTML XLST transforms, and other goodies baked in.

Primary LanguageDiff

About this Nginx

Important

This Nginx build currently supports version 1.6.x. Please see the tags within this repository for previously supported versions (1.4.x).

This version of Nginx is customised in a number of different ways:

  • Adds support for Shibboleth authentication for applications served by Nginx using the nginx-http-shibboleth module. This requires a Shibboleth SP built with FastCGI support and correctly configured. Shibboleth authentication with applications served via Nginx.
  • Has SPDY support built (depends on OpenSSL 1.0.1 being installed)
  • Adds LDAP authentication for Nginx using nginx-ldap-auth.
  • Has custom HTML XSLT transformation built in. This allows transformation of HTML documents on-the-fly via XSL (eg that which comes from Diazo for theming).
  • Has the ngx-fancyindex module for folder listings.
  • Has the ngx_ajp_module module for talking to AJP backends.
  • Has XLST support built.

See the build script for details of where these dependencies live.

Building Nginx

  1. Ensure Vagrant is installed.

  2. Run the following:

    git clone https://github.com/jcu-eresearch/nginx-custom-build.git
cd nginx-custom-build
vagrant up; vagrant destroy -f
ls x86_64

  3. Enjoy your new RPMs, available in the current directory.

If you're not into Vagrant, then you can manually run https://github.com/jcu-eresearch/nginx-custom-build/blob/master/nginx-build.sh on your own EL 6 machine, ensuring that you have the *.patch files from this repository in your ~/rpmbuild/SPECS directory.

This Vagrant configuration will always build the latest stable version of Nginx.

Testing and debugging nginx-http-shibboleth

Use the configuration provided, as your /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file, replacing anything that's already there. The configuration configures Nginx for debugging, and when nginx.debug (from the nginx-debug package) is run, will cascade all debug messages into the console.

If you're specifically interested in the Shibboleth module, watch the output for comments consisting of shib request authorizer (and shib request in general. Using the configuration below, you can make a simple request to make the Shib request authorizer work:

curl -i http://localhost/test1

Using the configuration provided, must result in a 401 Not Authorized response, which is correct.

Tests

Run the following:

curl -i http://localhost/test{1,2,3}

and compare the request results with the comments in the configuration above. If any of the above don't behave exactly as specified this, the Shibboleth module may need to be updated. If you find this, report an issue over at https://github.com/nginx-shib/nginx-http-shibboleth.

If you think you've encounted a problem with the interaction with this specific Nginx build, then report an issue to this repository. Thanks!

Credits