Lighty or nginx

[excaliburj]

Not providing the proper help to users is asinine, and configuring Nginx like you do Apache is not only impossible but most likely leads to security issues.

Please show ONCE where I suggested this. This not being the first time you've accused me saying something I haven't, I'm beginning to suspect you don't actually read what's written.

When what's called for is a migration path, failure to provide any such which takes into consideration a starting point, is an absolute, indisputable failure to provide support.

Turning a blind eye to this fact does not change it.

It's not up to YOU what represents useful help. It's the eyes of those seeking help.

It actually is, as someone who spends a lot of time helping people with Nginx I have a very good perspective on what kind of help is needed, and a very large part of people who start with Nginx are having problems because they try to configure it like Apache leading to thinks like if !($uri ~* '^(\/gridfs)')

No, it is not up to you. Not ever. Such arrogance may be the very core of the problem.

When someone considers changing, they want to know how to get from here to there. Steps to take. Starting from where they are. They don't care about any 'mindset' BS. And you cannot and do not SUPPORT them when you ignore where they are starting from. Documentation which ignores where they are starting from will ALWAYS be inadequate and extremely limiting.

You have made it abundantly clear that actual support in the form of information a potential user wants and can make quick use of does NOT exist and WILL NOT exist as long as the current attitude in place prevails.

[青山 素子]

When someone considers changing, they want to know how to get from here to there. Steps to take. Starting from where they are. They don't care about any 'mindset' BS. And you cannot and do not SUPPORT them when you ignore where they are starting from. Documentation which ignores where they are starting from will ALWAYS be inadequate and extremely limiting.

You have made it abundantly clear that actual support in the form of information a potential user wants and can make quick use of does NOT exist and WILL NOT exist as long as the current attitude in place prevails.

I think, perhaps, that you are taking Ensiferous' words the wrong way. When something is very different from another, it might not be prudent to try and draw comparisons because they just won't work. In cases like those, it usually works out best to start learning from the basics so the differences don't trip you up. Assuming nginx is like that in comparison to Apache HTTPd, this might the the best way.

An example, if you will.

Last week, I was looking at distributed version control systems. I'm used to Subversion, but I wanted to see what advantages the distributed model brings. One of the sites I was looking at was a tutorial on Mercurial (the site was HgInit, by the way). It had the most interesting paragraph near the end of the page:

And then you'll get Jacob, or whoever the equivalent of Jacob is at your office, to give you the "Subversion to Mercurial cheat sheet," and you'll spend three months thinking that hg fetch is just like svn up, without really knowing what hg fetch does, and one day, things will go wrong and you'll blame Mercurial, when you really should be blaming yourself for not understanding how Mercurial works.

I think that's what the point is. Yes, you can probably map Apache things to nginx, but that would create expectations that they were exactly the same or at least compatible when they are really not. When something breaks, the user will blame nginx instead of their incomplete/wrong understanding of what the feature actually does.

[excaliburj]

user: Where can I find out how to translate the RewriteRules in my .htaccess file into nginx config statements?

ngingx 'help': There is nowhere. Our stuff is so different that you have to learn a whole different mindset.

user: What, you don't have a simple rewrite statement?

ngingx 'help': Of course we do.

user: Fine. Give me or point me to some information about how to go from what I have to what nginx needs.

ngingx 'help': You can only start fresh. You can't get here from there.

user: OK. Then I won't be getting anywhere. Bye.

The fact is that the largest pool of potential users out there ARE Apache users.

I would guess that plenty of them have no idea what all the lines in their .htaccess files actually DO (they just scarfed them off some hints-and-tips site - or they install an SMF mod that auto-generates them). Telling them (straight out or by lack of reference) they have to learn a NEW way of doing it when they never even learned the OLD way is a sure-fire path to them NEVER looking at changing.

Others may have some actual knowledge of Apache and need to learn some/many new things. Preventing them from adopting your software until AFTER they do so by not helping them migrate what they have NOW seems an ill-advised strategy. Once using the webserver, of course they'll want to use it as best they can.

Both of these, the clueless and the veteran, quite likely consider there to be a 'lack of support' to help them get nginx up and running. And I believe they are quite warranted in doing so.

I suppose, though, that it all comes down to who you want using your software: whether you wish to popularize it or limit it to a core of dedicated enthusiasts. If your goal is the latter, though, you shouldn't be surprised (nor should you object to it) when then the view of 'the masses' is that support for THEIR needs is lacking.

[青山 素子]

Hmmm.....

I went to the main nginx site, and looked at some possible documentation links. Look what I found linked under "HowTo": Converting rewrite rules

On the wiki, under the "Configuration" section, I found a bunch of links to nginx rewrite examples.

Of course, I'm just a sysadmin. Normal people wouldn't ever think to look on the official website and at the official wiki.


(By the way, looking at the canonical domain rewrite example, configuring rewrite is quite different, so I'm not surprised there is no simple "conversion" guide.)

[excaliburj]

Did I ever say once that there was no samples of how nginx does it? Please quote where I did so.

The fact that there ARE such examples, without a single note about the statements that people will already have in place and how they relate is the point.

I want to develop communities, not to reinvent the wheel

Showing that the site gives instructions on how to reinvent the wheel hardly addresses the view that nginx requires such reinvention.

[青山 素子]

Did I ever say once that there was no samples of how nginx does it? Please quote where I did so.

No, but you implied it was difficult to find examples of how to convert the rules.

Showing that the site gives instructions on how to reinvent the wheel hardly addresses the view that nginx requires such reinvention.

If you want Apache HTTPd, use it. If you want nginx, use that. Nobody is forcing you to use one or the other. The fact that rewrites (one small part of things) is done differently doesn't make one thing worse than the other.



Frankly, if a user is just grabbing rewrite samples off a website and plugging them in without knowing what they do, they probably aren't in a position to administer a web server. A sysadmin - the person who would be installing this - should have enough skills to figure out how to convert based on the documentation, or a request for some help to accomplish the same thing ("how do I redirect all requests except for those to a specific directory to a certain file?" would be a good example of such a request).

[excaliburj]

Again, if it's what you HAVE, then you want to know how to make it into what you NEED.

If you think only those who are in fact willing to reinvent the wheel should be using the software, then there's no business whatsoever complaining about those who are not willing considering the software and its users to lack support for them.

Ensiferous took issue with this popular view, yet everything he posted seems to support the exclusionist model.

I use nginx alone (not just as a front end to Apache) on a dedicated box and have for nearly a year and a half now. And I recommend it. But when I do so I warn that migrating will require lots of work, a steep learning curve without much in the way of migration references, and that posts to their support forum/mailing list could easily go for days and days without response. In my opinion, such things do not make for a high grade on 'support'.

[Ensiferous]

I took issues with *your* view. I'm sorry but your view is not the popular one, I'm not sure how you got this as it's not what I hear at all, maybe a year ago, but certainly not now.

No one here has ever said we're forcing users to reinvent the wheels, but we *are* forcing them to actually learn what the hell they're doing, if we don't then they'll happily copy configurations from various blogs and then come crying when they get hacked. And I'm not even kidding here, 90% of the third party blogs contain configurations that are not secure and will open a very real attack vector.

Therefore it's important for us not to teach users how to convert their Apache HTTPd rules but rather how to actually configure Nginx. That is the focus on our wiki. You might disagree with that but quite frankly you don't seem to deal with Nginx as any thing more than for your own use.

I know this is copping out but I'm really done with discussing this, you're completely backed into a corner right now making you extremely defensive to anything said, you're not actually thinking about whether things are right but only about how you can understand what's written in a way that you may use it to strengthen your position. If you took a step back and actually read things you'd realize that your point of view doesn't make sense. And if you still think so then I'm truly sorry.

[excaliburj]

I took issues with *your* view. I'm sorry but your view is not the popular one, I'm not sure how you got this as it's not what I hear at all, maybe a year ago, but certainly not now.

No one here has ever said we're forcing users to reinvent the wheels, but we *are* forcing them to actually learn what the hell they're doing, if we don't then they'll happily copy configurations from various blogs and then come crying when they get hacked. And I'm not even kidding here, 90% of the third party blogs contain configuration that are not secure and will open a very real attack vector.

Therefore it's important for us not to teach users how to convert their Apache HTTPd rules but rather how to actually configure Nginx. That is the focus on our wiki. You might disagree with that but quite frankly you don't seem to deal with Nginx as any thing more than for your own use.

I know this is copping out but I'm really done with discussing this, you're completely backed into a corner right now making you extremely defensive to anything said, you're not actually thinking about whether things are right but only about how you can understand what's written in a way that you may use it to strengthen your position. If you took a step back and actually read things you'd realize that your point of view doesn't make sense. And if you still think so then I'm truly sorry.

You have no credibility at all. You are the one that made the grandiose claim that ALL support is archived and searchable, but when the first (and easily one of the most obvious) keyword was shown not to be found, it suddenly became 'by design'.

Now once again, you state an outright falsehood. I wasn't the one HERE to originally complain about reinventing the wheel. That was a quote from someone else in this thread. So, your claiming here that "No one here has ever said..." is clearly wrong.

Instead of trying to claim that responses that languish for days and days "isn't too bad", maybe push to improve that situation.

Instead of trying to make excuses over the lack of obvious keywords available for search, push for a document on the Wiki designed to capture those Apache keywords in a "Moving From Apache" document (where key differences and dangers can be pointed out), rather than trying to pretend the 800 pound gorilla doesn't exist.

In other words, step up the actual support by providing what people are looking for instead of trying to rationalize the poor levels provided currently.

[ModelBoatMayhem]

Hi,
You guys really seem to know what you're talking about, I wonder if you could help me too?

I have a smallish forum, 7,000  members, 300,00  post and a huge amount of photos on my forum and for the last 6 months I've been  plagued with 504 Timeout errors. 

Hostforweb have 'upped' me from a VPS2 to VPS4 but it has made no difference.

about 2 years ago, someone in Hostforweb loaded 'nginx' and the service improved drastically until about 6 moths ago when the same old 504 Timeout errors reared it's ugly head again.
Hostforweb are now telling me "they don't support nginx, only Lightspeed.
"I argued 'til I was blue in the face that they had loading it in the first place but no joy.

1. What's the next thing I need to do now re: 504 errors?

2. What "fixes" do you guys recommend? ( please use very short and simple words please! ) 

3. ( Can I supply any other details?)

Thanks in advance,
Martin - Modelboatmayhem

[Something like that]

Read the Twenty Four Things stickied at the top of this forum and let us know how you made out with those recommendations.