How to compile ngx_pagespeed into Nginx on CentOS 7

ngx_pagespeed is an Nginx module that allows you to automatically optimize the resources of your web pages, it can setup a bunch of really cool cache rules to reduce the bandwidth used across the network, minify & combine elements to reduce the size of the files, optimize images, photos and much more to make your websites blazing fast.

How can I add mod_pagespeed into Nginx on CentOS 7?

If you compiled and installed Nginx from source, then it’s your lucky day because you will have to configure and build Nginx again, it will be really easy. And if you installed Nginx from a binary package like RPM, then you will have to remove it and install from source, but don’t worry, we will guide you during the entire process, it’s easy if you do it carefully.

Requirements

Let’s install some package requirements before we begin.

yum install gcc-c++ pcre-devel zlib-devel make unzip

Get your current Nginx configuration by typing:

nginx -V

This will provide you the current configuration of your Nginx server. The most important options are after “configure arguments:”.

Example:

[root@scalescale.com:~]nginx -V
nginx version: nginx/1.8.0
built by gcc 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-16) (GCC)
built with OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
TLS SNI support enabled
configure arguments: --prefix=/etc/nginx --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/run/nginx.lock --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/client_temp --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/proxy_temp --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/fastcgi_temp --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/uwsgi_temp --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/scgi_temp --user=nginx --group=nginx --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_mp4_module --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_random_index_module --with-http_secure_link_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --with-file-aio --with-ipv6 --with-http_spdy_module --with-cc-opt='-O2 -g -pipe -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic'

Create a backup of your init.d script

cp /etc/init.d/nginx /etc/init.d/nginx.bak

Create a backup of your Nginx configuration files

rsync -avpr /etc/nginx /etc/nginx.bak --exclude="logs"

Download ngx_pagespeed module

cd
NPS_VERSION=1.9.32.10
wget https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed/archive/release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta.zip
unzip release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta.zip
cd ngx_pagespeed-release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta/
wget https://dl.google.com/dl/page-speed/psol/${NPS_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ${NPS_VERSION}.tar.gz # extracts to psol/

Download and build Nginx with support for PageSpeed

cd
# check http://nginx.org/en/download.html for the latest version
NGINX_VERSION=1.8.0
wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar -xvzf nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}.tar.gz
cd nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}/
./configure your_previous_nginx_config_goes_here--add-module=$HOME/ngx_pagespeed-release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta

If you are running a 32-bit userland with a 64-bit kernel, you will have build a 32 bit version of pagespeed instead:

setarch i686 ./configure --add-module=$HOME/ngx_pagespeed-release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta

A full example of the ./configure command adding the ngx_pagespeed module would be:

./configure --prefix=/etc/nginx --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/run/nginx.lock --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/client_temp --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/proxy_temp --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/fastcgi_temp --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/uwsgi_temp --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/scgi_temp --user=nginx --group=nginx --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_mp4_module --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_random_index_module --with-http_secure_link_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --with-file-aio --with-ipv6 --with-http_spdy_module --with-cc-opt='-O2 -g -pipe -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic' --add-module=$HOME/ngx_pagespeed-release-${NPS_VERSION}-beta

Remove Nginx binary package

This will cause you 1 minute of downtime, or less, depending on how powerful your CPU is. We will now remove Nginx RPM package because it may create conflicts with the source package that we will install later.

yum remove nginx

Install Nginx from source

Just run make and make install from the previous directory where you were

make
make install

Restore init.d files and Nginx configuration files

mv /etc/init.d/nginx.bak /etc/init.d/nginx
cp /etc/nginx.bak/nginx/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/ -fv
cp /etc/nginx.bak/nginx/conf.d/* /etc/nginx/conf.d/* -fv
chkconfig nginx on
service nginx restart

And you are done, now you have a full Nginx package compiled from scratch with ngx_pagespeed support.

How can I use ngx_pagespeed?

First, let’s create the ngx_pagespeed_cache directory, and set the right owner to avoid writing issues when you are using the ngx_pagespeed module:

mkdir /var/ngx_pagespeed_cache
chown nginx.nginx /var/ngx_pagespeed_cache

In order t activate pagespeed, you will have to add a few lines to your nginx.conf file or other include files that you may use. Just add this into every server block where you want PageSpeed enabled:

pagespeed on;
pagespeed FileCachePath /var/ngx_pagespeed_cache;

# Ensure requests for pagespeed optimized resources go to the pagespeed handler
# and no extraneous headers get set.
location ~ ".pagespeed.([a-z].)?[a-z]{2}.[^.]{10}.[^.]+" {
add_header "" "";
}
location ~ "^/pagespeed_static/" { }
location ~ "^/ngx_pagespeed_beacon$" { }

After done, reload Nginx to apply changes:

service nginx reload

Now PageSpeed is active, but the hard part starts now, and that is the configuration of the rules. You will have to read the PageSpeed Configuration Documents and start learning which rule is right for your websites and applications: read more

How can I disable PageSpeed Module?

If you ever need to disable ngx_pagespeed then you can disable it easily, edit your nginx.conf file and set:

pagespeed off;

Reload Nginx to apply the changes:

service nginx reload

Conclusion

At this time you should have successfully installed Nginx from source with ngx_pagespeed module fully working. Now it’s up to you to configure it and tune it to get your site speed and performance into the next direction. The only disadvantage from this tutorial is the fact that you will have to update your Nginx installation manually (configuring, making and installing) each time there is a new Nginx version.