I was recently working on project where a client had cPanel/WHM with Nginx and Apache. They had a large number of sites managed by Nginx with a large number of includes. I created a custom config to override a location block and needed to be certain that my changes where actually being picked up. Anytime I make changes to an Nginx config, I try to be vigilant about running:
nginx -t
to test my configuration and ensure I don’t have any syntax errors. I was looking for an easy way to view the actual compiled config and found the -T
flag which will test the configuration and dump it to standard out. This is pretty handy if you have a large number of includes in various locations. Here is an example from a fresh Nginx Docker container:
root@2771f302dc98:/# nginx -T
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
# configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:
user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log notice;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
#gzip on;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}
# configuration file /etc/nginx/mime.types:
types {
text/html html htm shtml;
text/css css;
text/xml xml;
image/gif gif;
image/jpeg jpeg jpg;
application/javascript js;
application/atom+xml atom;
application/rss+xml rss;
text/mathml mml;
text/plain txt;
text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor jad;
text/vnd.wap.wml wml;
text/x-component htc;
image/avif avif;
image/png png;
image/svg+xml svg svgz;
image/tiff tif tiff;
image/vnd.wap.wbmp wbmp;
image/webp webp;
image/x-icon ico;
image/x-jng jng;
image/x-ms-bmp bmp;
font/woff woff;
font/woff2 woff2;
application/java-archive jar war ear;
application/json json;
application/mac-binhex40 hqx;
application/msword doc;
application/pdf pdf;
application/postscript ps eps ai;
application/rtf rtf;
application/vnd.apple.mpegurl m3u8;
application/vnd.google-earth.kml+xml kml;
application/vnd.google-earth.kmz kmz;
application/vnd.ms-excel xls;
application/vnd.ms-fontobject eot;
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint ppt;
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics odg;
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation odp;
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet ods;
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text odt;
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation
pptx;
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
xlsx;
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
docx;
application/vnd.wap.wmlc wmlc;
application/wasm wasm;
application/x-7z-compressed 7z;
application/x-cocoa cco;
application/x-java-archive-diff jardiff;
application/x-java-jnlp-file jnlp;
application/x-makeself run;
application/x-perl pl pm;
application/x-pilot prc pdb;
application/x-rar-compressed rar;
application/x-redhat-package-manager rpm;
application/x-sea sea;
application/x-shockwave-flash swf;
application/x-stuffit sit;
application/x-tcl tcl tk;
application/x-x509-ca-cert der pem crt;
application/x-xpinstall xpi;
application/xhtml+xml xhtml;
application/xspf+xml xspf;
application/zip zip;
application/octet-stream bin exe dll;
application/octet-stream deb;
application/octet-stream dmg;
application/octet-stream iso img;
application/octet-stream msi msp msm;
audio/midi mid midi kar;
audio/mpeg mp3;
audio/ogg ogg;
audio/x-m4a m4a;
audio/x-realaudio ra;
video/3gpp 3gpp 3gp;
video/mp2t ts;
video/mp4 mp4;
video/mpeg mpeg mpg;
video/quicktime mov;
video/webm webm;
video/x-flv flv;
video/x-m4v m4v;
video/x-mng mng;
video/x-ms-asf asx asf;
video/x-ms-wmv wmv;
video/x-msvideo avi;
}
# configuration file /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:
server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost;
#access_log /var/log/nginx/host.access.log main;
location / {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
#error_page 404 /404.html;
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
}
# proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
#
#location ~ \.php$ {
# proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1;
#}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
#location ~ \.php$ {
# root html;
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# fastcgi_index index.php;
# fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
# include fastcgi_params;
#}
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
#location ~ /\.ht {
# deny all;
#}
}
As you can see from the output above, we get all of the various Nginx config files in use printed to the console, perfect for grepping
or searching/filtering with other tools.