How to install NGINX on Ubuntu 18.04/20.04

Nginx is a widely popular and open-source web server that you can use as a web server, reverse proxy, cache server and load balancer among other things. It is very powerful and lightweight and takes very few resources. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Nginx Web Server on ubuntu 18.04/20.04 machine. So let’s get started.

There are two methods with which you can install the Nginx Web Server on ubuntu OS.

Prerequisite

• Ubuntu 20.04 Machine
• User with the sudo user or root user privileges.
• Good Internet Connection

Method:1 – Install Nginx on Ubuntu using the Ubuntu Official Repository

Nginx package is maintained on the default Ubuntu official repositories, so you can install it with the default package manager. It is a good update the official repository first. To install Nginx on Ubuntu, execute the following command,

$ sudo apt upgrade -y

$ sudo apt install nginx

Once the nginx is installed. You can check nginx service status by running the below command,

$ sudo systemctl status nginx

or

$ ps -ef | grep nginx

If it’s not running, you can start the nginx service by the following command,

$ sudo systemctl start nginx

It is a good practice to enable the nginx service at the boot time. You can enable it by running the following command,

$ sudo systemctl enable nginx

Once the webserver is up and running, you can also access the default webpage of Nginx. All you need is the system IP address or if you are trying to access the webpage on the localhost, then we can also access the webpage with either ‘localhost’ or ‘127.0.0.1’ as the URL.

http://IP_address_of_the_system

or

http://localhost

Method:2 – Install Nginx on ubuntu using the Official Nginx Repository

Nginx can be installed by the official nginx repositories. To do this first you need to install the keys that are used to sign the NGINX packages,

$ sudo wget https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key

$ sudo apt-key add nginx_signing.key

Next, you will have to add the repositories in the file “/etc/apt/sources.list”,

$ nano /etc/apt/sources.list

deb https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ <Version-Name> nginx

deb-src https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ <Version-Name> nginx

Here, <Version-Name> refers to the code the Ubuntu version being used, list is mentioned below,

Version-Name	Version-Code
Trusty	14.04 LTS
Xenial	16.04
Bionic	18.04
Disco	19.04
Focal	20.04

So for Ubuntu 20.04, we need to add the following entries to ‘/etc/sources.list’,

deb https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ focal nginx

deb-src https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ focal nginx

Once done, save the file & exit & run the following command to install nginx on Ubuntu,

$ sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y

$ sudo apt install nginx

Next check the status of the nginx service and if it’s not running, you must start the nginx service by the following command,

$ sudo systemctl status nginx

$ sudo systemctl start nginx

As we said earlier It is a good practice to enable the nginx service at the boot time. You should enable it by running the following command,

$ sudo systemctl enable nginx

Once the webserver is up and running, you can also access the default webpage of Nginx on your favourite web browser.

Open Default Ports in UFW Firewall

By default, nginx runs on port 80 so we need to open tcp port in default ufw firewall. To check the status of ufw, run the following command:

$ sudo ufw status

Status: inactive

You can enable the ufw firewall using below command.

$ sudo ufw enable

Command may disrupt existing ssh connections. Proceed with operation (y|n)? y
Firewall is active and enabled on system startup

Now open ssh port 22 and nginx port 80 in ufw using following command: 

$ sudo ufw allow 22/tcp

$ sudo ufw allow 80/tcp

Next, check the status of UFW by following command:

$ sudo ufw status

Status: active
To                                        Action        From
--                                          ------            ----
22/tcp                                ALLOW     Anywhere
80/tcp                               ALLOW     Anywhere

Hence, we opened default port of nginx in ufw firewall.

Conclusion

So let’s finish our tutorial on how to install Nginx web server on Ubuntu 18.04/20.04. In our next tutorial, we will discuss how we can create the webserver blocks to host multiple websites on a single Nginx webserver.

Read Also : How to install Nginx Web Server on RHEL/CentOS