Mapping sites to other sites without using FastCGI/DB

Server NGINX
1

Hello,

I’m new to Nginx but have been very impressed with it – thanks for
contributing this great software.

I have a mass virtual hosting setup, all sites have the same config
and will be served with server_name * (wildcard). The config is very
simple, just serving some static files. I want to keep the Nginx
boxes as simple and light as possible – no FastCGI, no database.

Some domains will simply be an alias to another domain. I know that
for one or two domains, you could simply do a rewrite from
ALIASDOMAIN.com/(.*) to REALDOMAIN/$1, but our situation is more
dynamic and we can’t update the config file all the time.

Is there as way to have:

docroot/
realdomain.com/
[content]
aliasdomain.com/
aliased_to

where aliased_to is a text file containing the real domain?

Or what about:

docroot/
realdomain.com/
[content]
aliasdomain.com/
aliasto_realdomain.com

Something like that?

In apache mod_rewrite I would do this using maps, but my Nginx skills
are weak!

Thanks in advance,
Brian Kirkbride

2

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 01:18:24PM -0600, Brian Kirkbride wrote:

ALIASDOMAIN.com/(.*) to REALDOMAIN/$1, but our situation is more
where aliased_to is a text file containing the real domain?

In apache mod_rewrite I would do this using maps, but my Nginx skills
are weak!

Use map, http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxHttpMapModule

http {
map $http_host $root {
realdomain.com realdomain.com;
aliasdomain.com realdomain.com;
…
}

 server {
      locaiton / {
          root    /docroot/$root;
          ...
      }
 }

}

3

Igor S. wrote:

Some domains will simply be an alias to another domain. I know that
aliased_to

    aliasdomain.com       realdomain.com;

Thanks Igor!

I can’t believe I missed the map module while Googling. That should
work great for our problem. We will just regenerate a mapfile to be
included in the config and then kill -HUP nginx on changes.

Our host map be very large, possibly several thousand entries? Will
this slow things down very much?

Best,
Brian

4

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 02:30:24PM -0600, Brian Kirkbride wrote:

I can’t believe I missed the map module while Googling. That should
work great for our problem. We will just regenerate a mapfile to be
included in the config and then kill -HUP nginx on changes.

Our host map be very large, possibly several thousand entries? Will
this slow things down very much?

No, it’s intended for tens thousands entries.