How to install NGINX with PageSpeed module in Ubuntu LTS / Debian

UPDATE: You can now install NGINX with PageSpeed in Ubuntu LTS with deb package: https://blog.mypapit.net/2015/08/install-nginx-with-pagespeed-using-deb-for-ubuntu-lts-amd64.html

INSTALLING NGINX USING UBUNTU APT-GET SOURCE
PageSpeed modules are open source modules developed by Google Inc that can perform website optimization to ensure faster site delivery, automatically.

PageSpeed module is not included in NGINX installation in Ubuntu or Debian. So you need to recompile NGINX together with PageSpeed module, to enable its functionality.

You can install NGINX 1.8.0 with PageSpeed for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS here, using dpkg:
or you can compile it from source code using apt-get.

There are several steps to this method, first you need to get the latest nginx stable (or mainline) from PPA (optional)

#this step is optional, only if you want to get the latest Ubuntu version of nginx

sudo apt-get -y install software-properties-common

sudo -s

nginx=stable # use nginx=development for latest development version
add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/$nginx

apt-get update 

apt-get -y upgrade

Then, you’ve to install dpkg-dev, unzip utility and nginx source from apt repository

apt-get -y install dpkg-dev unzip

apt-get install nginx

apt-get source nginx

After that, you need to download PageSpeed module, this instruction is adapted from

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/module/build_ngx_pagespeed_from_source

**note replace ${NGINX_VERSION} with the version of NGINX available from apt-get, in my case – its “1.8.0”

cd
export NPS_VERSION=1.9.32.4
export NGINX_VERSION=1.8.0

wget -c https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed/archive/release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta.zip

unzip release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta.zip

cd ngx_pagespeed-release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta/

wget -c https://dl.google.com/dl/page-speed/psol/${NPS_VERSION}.tar.gz

tar -xzvf ${NPS_VERSION}.tar.gz

cd nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}

Install all build dependencies (your configuration may varies, but i keep it within default Ubuntu configuration.

apt-get -y install libpcre3-dev libssl-dev libxslt1-dev libgd-dev libgeoip-dev geoip-bin geoip-database libpam0g-dev zlib1g-dev memcached

Then configure nginx, remember to replace ${NGINX_VERSION} with your current version of NGINX. In my case, its “1.8.0”

cd nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}

./configure  --with-cc-opt='-g -O2 -fPIE -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2' --with-ld-opt='-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -fPIE -pie -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,-z,now' --prefix=/usr/share/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --pid-path=/run/nginx.pid --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/scgi --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi --with-debug --with-pcre-jit --with-ipv6 --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_geoip_module --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_image_filter_module --with-http_spdy_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_xslt_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --add-module=debian/modules/nginx-auth-pam --add-module=debian/modules/nginx-dav-ext-module --add-module=debian/modules/nginx-echo --add-module=debian/modules/nginx-upstream-fair --add-module=debian/modules/ngx_http_substitutions_filter_module --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin --add-module=$HOME/ngx_pagespeed-release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta

After that, run make and make install

make

make install

The newly compiled nginx will be installed in “/usr/local/bin” without overwriting the original binary file.

Create nginx-pagespeed /etc/init.d file

Optionally you may duplicate nginx in init.d, and rename it to nginx-pagespeed, and stop the original nginx server

cp /etc/init.d/nginx /etc/init.d/nginx-pagespeed

sed -i 's|/usr/sbin/nginx|/usr/local/sbin/nginx|g' /etc/init.d/nginx-pagespeed

service nginx stop

You may also enable basic PageSpeed config in /etc/nginx/conf.d/

nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/pagespeed.conf

And add these basic PageSpeed config

#file /etc/nginx/conf.d/pagespeed.conf
        pagespeed on;
        pagespeed FetchWithGzip on;

        pagespeed FileCachePath /run/shm/pagespeed_cache;
        pagespeed RewriteLevel CoreFilters;

Save the file, and test nginx config, after that, start nginx-pagespeed service.

/usr/local/sbin/nginx -t

service nginx-pagespeed start

**Note: This instruction has been tested under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with nginx 1.8.0 from ppa:nginx/stable respository. The LTS is chosen because it has much longer support for server, and nginx 1.8.0 supports both spdy 3.1 and latest PageSpeed.

***Please share any thoughts or opinion or suggested correction if this guide didn’t work for you. Thanks!!

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p/s: Although I currently use Ubuntu, I was actually a Debian user and I continue to use Debian on my VPS to host this website till this very day. Without Debian, I would never has discovered thousands of wonderful open source software in it vast software repositories :)