This is a nginx configuration for running Piwik.
It assumes that the domain assigned to Piwik is stats.example.com
.
Change this according to your server setup.
-
Filtering of invalid HTTP
Host
headers. -
Filtering of referrer when serving the Piwik JS or any other static files.
-
Hiding of all text files.
-
Restricted handling of PHP files. Only
index.php
andpiwik.php
are allowed. All other attempts to run a PHP file return a 404. -
IPv6 and IPv4 support.
-
Possibility of using Apache as a backend for dealing with PHP. This means using Nginx as a reverse proxy.
-
Static files use the OS buffer cache.
-
Caching of most Piwik pages with exceptions for the installation and administrative tasks.
-
piwik.php
is cached with a long TTL (2h). Hence faster to register an access. -
Inline
robots.txt
that disables all crawling.
This applies if you absolutely need to use the rather bad habit of
deploying web apps relying on .htaccess
, or you just want to use
Nginx as a reverse proxy. The config allows you to do so. Note that
this provides some benefits over using only Apache, since Nginx is
much faster than Apache. Furthermore you can use the proxy cache
and/or use Nginx as a load balancer.
The configuration of the example vhosts uses separate sockets for
IPv6 and IPv4. This way is simpler for those not (yet) having IPv6
support to disable it by commenting out the
listen
directive with the ipv6only=on
parameter.
Note that the IPv6 address uses an IP stolen from the IPv6 Wikipedia page. You must replace the indicated address by your address.
-
Move the old
/etc/nginx
directory to/etc/nginx.old
. -
Clone the git repository from github:
git clone https://github.com/perusio/piwik-nginx.git /etc/nginx
-
Edit the
sites-available/stats.example.com.conf
configuration file to suit your needs. Especially replace stats.example.com with your domain. -
Setup the PHP handling method. It can be:
-
Upstream HTTP server like Apache with mod_php. To use this method comment out the
include upstream_phpcgi.conf;
line innginx.conf
and uncomment the lines:include reverse_proxy.conf; include upstream_phpapache.conf;
Now you must set the proper address and port for your backend(s) in the
upstream_phpapache.conf
. By default it assumes the loopback127.0.0.1
interface on port8080
. Adjust accordingly to reflect your setup.Comment out all
fastcgi_pass
directives instats.example.com.conf
Uncomment out all theproxy_pass
directives. They have a comment around them, stating these instructions. -
FastCGI process using php-cgi. In this case an init script is required.
-
PHP FPM, this requires you to configure your fpm setup, in Debian/Ubuntu this is done in the
/etc/php5/fpm
directory. This is how the server is configured out of the box. It uses UNIX sockets. You can use TCP sockets if you prefer.Look here for an example configuration of
php-fpm
.Check that the socket is properly created and is listening. This can be done with
netstat
, like this for UNIX sockets:netstat --unix -l
or like this for TCP sockets:
netstat -t -l
It should display the PHP CGI socket.
Note that the default socket type is UNIX and the config assumes it to be listening on
unix:/tmp/php-cgi/php-cgi.socket
, if using thephp-cgi
, or inunix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock
usingphp-fpm
and that you should change to reflect your setup by editingupstream_phpcgi.conf
.
- Setup the cache for
piwik.php
. It depends if you use either FastCGI or Apache for processing PHP.
- FastCGI: Create the
/var/cache/nginx/fcgicache
directory if you're serving PHP with php-fpm or php cgi. This directory must be owned by the unpriveleged nginx user. In debian it'swww-data
. - Apache: Create the
/var/cache/nginx/proxycache
directory if you're serving PHP with Apache. This directory must be owned by the unpriveleged nginx user. In debian it'swww-data
. Comment out all the lines wherefcgi_cache
is referenced. You must uncomment the lineinclude proxy_cache_zone.conf;
onnginx.conf
.
-
Create the
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled
directory and enable the virtual host using one of the methods described below.Note that if you're using the nginx_ensite script described below it creates the
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled
directory if it doesn't exist the first time you run it for enabling a site. -
Reload Nginx:
/etc/init.d/nginx reload
-
Check that your site is working using your browser.
-
Remove the
/etc/nginx.old
directory. -
Done.
You can check if the responses are being cached or not. For the
short term cache check for a X-Piwik-Cache
header with a
HIT/EXPIRED/MISS/UPDATING/STALE
value. The same applies to the
long cache: check for a X-Piwik-Long-Cache
header with a
HIT/EXPIRED/MISS/UPDATING/STALE
value.
Example:
curl -I stats.example.com/piwik.php
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:17:15 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=10
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache
X-Piwik-Long-Cache: MISS
You can get the
status and ping pages for
the running instance of php-fpm
. There is a php_fpm_status.conf
file with the configuration for both features.
-
the status page at
/fpm-status
; -
the ping page at
/ping
.
For obvious reasons access to these pages is restricted to a given set of IP addresses. In the suggested configuration only from localhost and non-routable IPs of the 192.168.1.0 network.
The allowed hosts are defined in a geo block in file
php_fpm_status_allowed_hosts.conf
. You should edit the predefined IP
addresses to suit your setup.
To enable the status and ping pages uncomment the line in the
stats.example.com.conf
virtual host configuration file.
Note that this configuration assumes that you are stating exactly
which hosts can use your Piwik installation. In the example
config, for all static files, i.e., images, Javascript, Flash and
CSS there is a valid_referers
block where all allowed hosts are
enumerated. You should replace the *.mysite.com
and
othersite.com
with the hosts where you want Piwik to be used for
analytics.
If that is too much of an hassle for you, then just comment out the
valid_referers
block.
If you are using this configuration and you are not getting any
results for a particular site where you have Piwik enabled, then
first check for the valid_referers
block. To see if that host is
enumerated there.
There are some serious issues with some User Agents out there. Some are operated in a bandwidth hogging fashion. Implementing bots that use and abuse the site is bandwidth. Even more serious is when the User Agent is used for exploits. Trying to penetrate/crack the site through crafted scripts running under the cloak of a well meaning bot.
The same applies to Referers where shady sites sent traffic to you that only hijacks the bandwith and curtail the correct usage of Piwik.
There is a blacklist of User Agents and Referers that is disabled by default. You have to enable it explicitly.
Uncomment the include blacklist.conf
line in the nginx.conf
configuration file to enable User Agent and Referer blacklisting. Of
course you can define your own list of blacklisted User Agents.
There's a Debian repository with the latest version of Nginx. This is packaged for Debian unstable or testing. The instructions for using the repository are presented on this page.
It may work on Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu seems to appreciate more finding semi-witty names for their releases instead of making clear what is the status of the software included. Is it stable? Is it testing? Is it unstable? The package may work with your currently installed environment or not. I don't have the faintest idea which release to advise. So you are on your own. Generally the APT machinery will sort out for you any dependencies issues that might exist.
There's a small shell script that parses your php.ini
and
sets a sane environment, be it for development or
production settings.
Grab it here.
php-fpm is hardly perfect, or better said, it happens quite often that PHP has extremely long running processes that can completely clog PHP processing. To obviate that I've created a shell script that relaunches php-fpm whenever PHP hangs.
Grab it here.