These instructions aim to provide proper and the only correct way to install nginx web server on CentOS 7.
First things first. You have to upgrade your CentOS 7 to latest release because nginx natively supports CentOS 7 >= 7.4:
sudo yum update && yum upgrade
Now that we have at least CentOS 7.4, let’s install nginx repository to our system. We import nginx package signing key and install release package which contains the nginx yum repository file.
sudo rpm --import https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
next
sudo rpm -Uvh http://nginx.org/packages/centos/7/noarch/RPMS/nginx-release-centos-7-0.el7.ngx.noarch.rpm
As of this writing, EPEL repository has nginx package 1.12.2-2.el7 whereas nginx latest package is 1.12.2-1.el7_4.ngx. The actual version number is the same, but release number (-2 vs -1 in package names) is different. So if would proceed with installation, yum will install nginx from EPEL.
The nginx packages by EPEL have entirely different structure and we want stable nginx server which is packaged and maintained by nginx creators, not EPEL.
So let’s make sure that the native nginx repository has priority over the others.
Install priorities yum plugin and adjust nginx repository priority:
sudo yum -y install yum-plugin-priorities
next
echo 'priority=1' >> /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo
Check nginx version on repo:
yum info nginx
Now yum will prefer to install nginx from stable nginx repository. Finalise your nginx setup with:
sudo yum -y install nginx
Now we are ready to run nginx:
sudo systemctl start nginx
And don’t forget to enable it at boot time:
sudo systemctl enable nginx
Check statud nginx:
sudo systemctl status nginx
Check nginx version:
nginx -v
Check nginx test configuration:
nginx -t
Reload nginx service:
nginx -s reload
or
systemctl restart nginx