How to install NginxCP on CloudLinux (cPanel)

Update: NginxCP is has been abandoned. Have a look instead at CPnginx. 

While working with cPanel on CentOS and RedHat over the years I’ve read good things about Cloudlinux. However, I never played around with it and decided that this week I would take a look. NginxCP is a very common solution for admins looking to get the most throughput from web apps running on cPanel based web servers. This is achieved by reducing the demand on Apache by allowing Nginx to take care of static file serving. This is a quick guide for installing NginxCP on CloudLinux. Please note that NginxCP does not officially support CloudLinux but due to the identical nature of Cloudlinux to CentOS – except for a few RPMs – it works pretty well in most cases.

I you already have Cloudlinux and cPanel installed, please skip to the install subheading below. In my case, I started with CentOS 6.5 and followed the instructions here to convert to Cloudlinux. Next, was the cPanel install which you can follow the 3 commands listed here. After which, I imported a cPanel backup from a CentOS (w/ cPanel) server which powers about 40 websites, just to ensure I could properly test that everything worked. Also see: Nginx tuning tips: TLS/SSL HTTPS – Improved TTFB/latency.

Installing NginxCP on cPanel with CloudLinux

With Cloudlinux and cPanel already installed, you can now install NginxCP using the following commands:

mkdir /home/nginx
cd /home/nginx
wget http://nginxcp.com/latest/nginxadmin.tar
tar xf nginxadmin.tar
cd publicnginx
./nginxinstaller install

Done! Simply restart Apache then test your websites (Restarting Apache will also restart Nginx):

service httpd restart

If it helps, here’s a copy of the commands:

yum update
yum install wget
wget http://repo.cloudlinux.com/cloudlinux/sources/cln/cldeploy
sh cldeploy -k <your cloudlinux key here>
reboot
vi /etc/selinux/config
chkconfig iptables off
service iptables stop
yum update
yum install perl
cd /home
wget -N http://httpupdate.cpanel.net/latest
sh latest
mkdir /home/nginx
cd /home/nginx/
wget http://nginxcp.com/latest/nginxadmin.tar
tar xf nginxadmin.tar
cd publicnginx
./nginxinstaller install
service httpd restart

Disclaimer: Do not attempt this install on a production server. Use the above info at your own risk! After testing on a development server, make a full backup of the live server before attempting. The above NginxCP setup worked with vanilla install of cPanel and Cloudlinux. There’s no CageFS, CSF security tools and/or other useful (some useless) bloat that may break your install. It you encounter errors, review any 3rd party features/add-ons. Feel free to post below. Enjoy!