Moreover, when WordPress detects that mod_rewrite is not loaded (which is the case with nginx), it falls back to using PATHINFO permalinks, which inserts an extra ‘index.php’ in front. This hasn’t been much of a problem for me as I have been using the custom structure option to remove the index.php. It has been working fine for me. (Screenshot below)

Apart from that, you will also need to edit your nginx configuration file to make the permalinks work. We will use the try_files directive to pass URLs to WordPress’s index.php for them to be internally handled. This will also work for 404 requests.

• If your blog is at the root of the domain (something like http://www.myblog.com), find the “location /” block inside the configuration file, and add the following line to it.

  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;

  It should look like this after the edits :

          location / {
                  root   /var/www/nginx-default;
                  index  index.php index.html index.htm;
                  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
          }

• If your blog is in a subfolder (say /blog), you’ll have to add an extra “location /blog/” block to your configuration file :

          location /blog/ {
                  try_files $uri $uri/ /blog/index.php?q=$uri&$args;
          }

After you have finished making the changes in the configuration file, reload the nginx configuration by :

nginx -s reload

WordPress’ pretty permalinks should work fine now.

Related posts:

1. Enable directory listing in nginx
2. Nginx: Resolving “No input file specified” error
3. IPv6 support in nginx

nginx -V

The results should be something like this :

nginx version: nginx/0.7.65
TLS SNI support enabled
configure arguments: --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi --with-debug --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_realip_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --with-ipv6 --add-module=/build/buildd/nginx-0.7.65/modules/nginx-upstream-fair

Pre-compiled Debian/Ubuntu packages already has IPv6 support built-in.

Now we need to edit the configuration file to tell nginx to bind to IPv6 addresses(as well as IPv4 addresses).

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Depending on your configuration, this file might be located somewhere else. (Check /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf if you compiled nginx manually)

Search for listen directives and change them as follows:

listen [::]:80;

This will make nginx bind to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.

In order to bind to IPv6 addresses only (no IPv4), use the following:

listen [::]:80 default ipv6only=on;

In order to bind to a specific IPv6 address:

listen [2001:6f8:1c00:16d::2]:80;

When you are done, reload the nginx configuration file by typing in :

nginx -s reload

Now we have to check whether nginx is listening to both IPv6 and IPv4 requests:

netstat -tulpna | grep nginx

You’ll get something like this :

tcp6       0      0 :::80                   :::*                    LISTEN      1891/nginx

You have successfully configured nginx to respond to IPv6 requests.

Related posts:

1. Nginx: Resolving “No input file specified” error
2. Enable directory listing in nginx
3. Www/no-www rewrite rules for nginx

I recently noticed that apart for the decrease in page loading time, the activity of Googlebot has increased manyfold. Here’s a screen-shot of the report from Google Webmaster Tools :

Not bad, eh?

More recently, I moved this blog to the VPS running on Nginx, and I have not been disappointed. This blog is running on WordPress 3.0.1, with no caching plugins. The posts seem to load faster than ever, as evident from this Google Webmaster Tools report :

I couldn’t be more happy.

PS: Of course, some of the speed improvement can be attributed to the fact that I moved from a shared server to a VPS, but that doesn’t undermine the awesomeness that is Nginx.

PPS: Just in case anyone’s interested, I’m providing limited slots for hosting your site on this VPS. If you are interested, visit the page.

Related posts:

1. WordPress permalinks in nginx
2. Nginx: Resolving “No input file specified” error
3. WWW or no-WWW?

I finally got it to work by moving the root directive out of location.
So, if you have something like this :

server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  domain.com www.domain.com;
        access_log  /var/...........................;
        location / {
                root   /path/to/root;
                index  index.php index.html index.htm;
        }
        location /somedir {
               autoindex on;
        }
}

Change it to :

server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  domain.com www.domain.com;
        access_log  /var/...........................;
        root   /path/to/root;
        location / {
                index  index.php index.html index.htm;
        }
        location /somedir {
               autoindex on;
        }
}

Directory indices should show flawlessly now.
(A live example can be found here.)

Related posts:

1. Www/no-www rewrite rules for nginx
2. WordPress permalinks in nginx
3. Nginx: Resolving “No input file specified” error

WWW to Non-WWW:

#301 redirect www to non-www
server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  www.domain.com;
        rewrite   ^  http://domain.com$request_uri? permanent;
}
server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  domain.com;
        .........................................
        .........................................
}

Non-WWW to WWW:

#301 redirect non-www to www
server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  domain.com;
        rewrite   ^  http://www.domain.com$request_uri? permanent;
}
server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  www.domain.com;
        .........................................
        .........................................
}

Related posts:

1. Enable directory listing in nginx
2. IPv6 support in nginx
3. Nginx: Resolving “No input file specified” error

I logged into my VPS and checked the access logs.

cat animorphsfanforum.access.log | grep 'mail.php'

174.129.237.157 - - [20/Jul/2010:05:32:40 +0000] "GET /mail.php HTTP/1.0" 200 0 "-" "ia_archiver (+http://www.alexa.com/site/help/webmasters; crawler@alexa.com)"

I have a Firefox plugin to check the Alexa rank, and the URL must’ve been sent to Alexa when I executed that script for the first time. The Alexa bot sent the email while crawling the URL.

Much ado about nothing?

No related posts.

Although, it’s not technically an error, we can catch the request for the non-existent php file and show a custom 404 page.

First, find out the version of nginx you are using.

nginx -V

You’ll get an output like this :

nginx version: nginx/0.7.65
TLS SNI support enabled
configure arguments: --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi --with-debug --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_realip_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --with-ipv6 --add-module=/build/buildd-nginx_0.7.65-2~bpo50+1-i386-1taiV6/nginx-0.7.65/modules/nginx-upstream-fair

If php-cgi is running on port 9000, you’ll have something like this in your vhosts file :

location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index  index.php;
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME ....
...................................
...................................
}

Since nginx versions less than 0.6.36 doesn’t have the try_files directive, we’ll have two versions of the code.

For nginx 0.6.36+
We’ll use try_files here to catch and display an error page.

location ~ \.php$ {
try_files  $uri  /path/to/404.htm;
fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index  index.php;
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME ....
...................................
...................................
}

For older versions :

location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
error_page  404  /path/to/404.htm;
fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index  index.php;
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME ....
...................................
...................................
}

This will display the chosen 404 page for non-existent php files instead of the unhelpful “No input file specified.” message.

Related posts:

1. Enable directory listing in nginx
2. IPv6 support in nginx
3. WordPress permalinks in nginx

I’ve been meaning to try out Lubuntu for quite some time, but was thwarted by the lack of a torrent. If you didn’t know, Lubuntu is an Ubuntu variant using the lightweight LXDE desktop environment, like Kubuntu uses KDE or Xubuntu uses XFCE. It hasn’t been officially approved as a part of the Ubuntu family yet, but judging from the favourable reviews it has been getting, that day might not be far away. Lubuntu is supposed to be much lighter than Xubuntu, which I’m currently using and seems like it is all that.

Anyway, the official Lubuntu.net page doesn’t show a torrent or metalink download option. Search for a torrent serves up the Lubuntu beta2 torrent or custom Lubuntu distributions created by enthuciasts. I finally got the official torrent from the mailing list archive.

Without further ado, here’s the torrent downlad link :

http://people.ubuntu.com/~gilir/lubuntu-10.04.iso.torrent

Hope this saves you a little frustration.

Related posts:

1. Loving the Penguin
2. How to download a file concurrently/simultaneously from different sources in Ubuntu
3. Resolving the Network Manager bug in Ubuntu 9.10

Updates downloaded by aptitude are stored in the directory /var/cache/apt/archives. You’ll find the package files in .deb format(Debian software package format). If these updates are copied to the same directory on the other computer, aptitude will automatically recognise those files and use them as necessary while updating. You can copy the files using a flash drive or write them to a CD if you wish to.
You can copy the packages using this command :

sudo cp /var/cache/apt/archives/* /path/to/flash/drive

Now connect the flash drive to the other computer and copy the files to the /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory there.
After this, you need to update your package information and install the updates found.
Run :

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

All the required updates will be installed from the /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory(if available). You can also install new packages, and they will not be downloaded if they are available locally.

Related posts:

1. Get rid of freeze-ups during disk I/O activity in Ubuntu
2. Resolving the Network Manager bug in Ubuntu 9.10
3. Stop applications from auto starting in Ubuntu

Trying to mount an ext4 partition using the mount directive yields the error :

mount: unknown filesystem type 'ext4'

The roundabout way of doing it is setting a test_fs flag on the partition using the tune2fs utility.

su -
tune2fs -E test_fs /dev/hda1
mount -t ext4dev /dev/hda1 /place/to/mount/

Replace hda1 with the name of the ext4 partition you want to mount.

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