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How to configure nginx with gzip module for compression on centos 7
In this article, we have configured Nginx which is already installed on CentOS 7 to serve the clients with gzip compression to reduce the size of the contents sent to the web site visitors. We can configure the websites to load faster which depends on the size of all the files that are downloaded by the web browser, we can do this by reducing the size of the files transmitted from the website and load faster, which also reduces the cost which we pay for the bandwidth usage. gzipis a popular data compression package, which we will configure Nginx with gzip to compress the files on the server to load the files faster.
Creating the Test Files for Compression
Here we will create some demo files in the default Nginx directory to test the gzip compression. Nginx will then check the contents of the files it just determines the MiME types and determines the purpose of the file.
As Nginx will not compress very small files so we will create the files with some 1 KB of size to verify weather Nginx uses the compression where it should be. We create a 1 kilobyte file named demo.html in the default Nginx directory using the truncate command.
The extension denotes that it’s an HTML
$ sudo truncate -s 1k /usr/share/nginx/html/demo.html
We will also create a few more demo files using the same command: one .jpg image file, one .css stylesheet, and one .js JavaScript file.
$ sudo truncate -s 1k /usr/share/nginx/html/demo.jpg $ sudo truncate -s 1k /usr/share/nginx/html/demo.css $ sudo truncate -s 1k /usr/share/nginx/html/demo.js
Checking the Default Browser Behavior
We will now check that how Nginx behaves in respect to the compression with the fresh installation of the files which we have just created. We will check the demo.html served with compression.
Below is the command to request a file from our Nginx server using the gzip compression, we can also use Accept-Encoding: gzip to curl to test the compression.
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.html Output: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 18:53:06 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 1024 Last-Modified: Fri, 11 July 2016 18:48:02 GMT Connection: keep-alive ETag: "56eg2be82-400" Accept-Ranges: bytes
By default in the Nginx configuration gzip compression was disabled for that reason we have not seen the Content-Encoding: gzip in the above output. Now we will test the image named demo.jpg in the same way that how Nginx will compress the images.
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.jpg Output: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 18:58:43 GMT Content-Type: image/jpeg Content-Length: 1024 Last-Modified: Fri, 11 July 2016 18:48:35 GMT Connection: keep-alive ETag: "563e2be85-400" Accept-Ranges: bytes
Here also the output is without compression
We will test the CSS stylesheet also
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.css Output: Nginx response headers for CSS file HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 16:59:34 GMT Content-Type: text/css Content-Length: 1024 Last-Modified: Fri, 11 July 2016 12:48:55 GMT Connection: keep-alive ETag: "56e2be85-400" Accept-Ranges: bytes
Enabling and Configuring Nginx to use gzip Compression Module
By default, when we install the Nginx, the gzip compression modules are installed but not enabled in the Nginx gzip modules. We will create a configuration file in /etc/nginx/conf.d directory which are automatically loaded when we start the Nginx services
$ sudo vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/gzip.conf Files contents: ## # `gzip` compresstion enableing Settings # # gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; gzip_vary on; gzip_proxied any; gzip_comp_level 6; gzip_http_version 1.1; gzip_min_length 256; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript application/javascript application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf font/opentype image/svg+xml image/x-icon;
Configuration settings, used in the above configuration file.
gzip on - directive enables the Gzip compression. gzip_disable "msie6" - excludes Internet Explorer 6 from the browsers that will receive compressed files, because IE6 does not support gzip at all. gzip_vary and gzip_proxied - settings make sure that proxy servers between the browser and the server will recognize compression correctly. gzip_comp_level 6 - sets how much files will be compressed. The higher the number, the higher the compression level and the resources usage. 6 is a reasonable middle ground. gzip_http_version 1.1 - is used to limit gzip compression to browsers supporting the HTTP/1.1 protocol. If the browser does not support it, there is a good chance it does not support gzip either. gzip_min_length 256 - tells Nginx not to compress files smaller than 256 bytes. Very small files barely benefit from compression. gzip_types lists all - of the MIME types that will be compressed. In this case, the list includes HTML pages, CSS stylesheets, Javascript and JSON files, XML files, icons, SVG images, and web fonts.
Restarting the Nginx to Apply the Configuration
$ sudo systemctl restart nginx
Verifying the New Configuration
We will test the .html file using the curl command from the command prompt to check whether the compression has enabled or not
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.html Output: Nginx response headers HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 17:19:46 GMT Content-Type: text/html Last-Modified: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:38:22 GMT Connection: keep-alive Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip
We can also test the same with all the remaining files .jpg, .css and .js files
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.jpg Output: Nginx response headers HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 17:19:46 GMT Content-Type: image/jpeg Last-Modified: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:38:22 GMT Connection: keep-alive Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.css Output: Nginx response headers HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 17:19:46 GMT Content-Type: text/css Last-Modified: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:38:22 GMT Connection: keep-alive Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip
$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I http://localhost/demo.js Output: Nginx response headers HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.6.3 Date: Fri, 11 July 2016 17:19:46 GMT Content-Type: text/js Last-Modified: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:38:22 GMT Connection: keep-alive Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip
By adding the gzip compression module to the Nginx web browser with a simple changes in the configuration files, we can allow the websites to load quickly, which will also benefit the bandwidth consumption and also makes the visitors with limited bandwidth which can be received in the websites faster.
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