Posts Tagged ‘Modified’

How to enable output compression (gzipfile content compression) in nginx webserver

Friday, April 8th, 2011

I have recently installed and configured a Debian Linux server with nginx
. Since then I’ve been testing around different ways to optimize the nginx performance.

In my nginx quest, one of the most crucial settings which dramatically improved the end client performance was enabling the so called output compression which in Apache based servers is also known as content gzip compression .
In Apache webservers the content gzip compression is provided by a server module called mod_deflate .

The output compression nginx settings saves a lot of bandwidth and though it adds up a bit more load to the server, the plain text files like html, xml, js and css’s download time reduces drasticly as they’re streamed to the browser in gzip compressed format.
This little improvement in download speed also does impact the overall end user browser experience and therefore improves the browsing speed experience with websites.

If you have already had experience nginx you already know it is a bit fastidious and you have to be very careful with it’s configuration, however thanksfully enabling the gzip compression was actually rather easier than I thought.

Here is what I added in my nginx config to enable output compression:

## Compression
gzip on;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_comp_level 9;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_min_length 0;
gzip_vary on;

Important note here is that need to add this code in the nginx configuration block starting with:

http {
....
## Compression
gzip on;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_comp_level 9;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_min_length 0;
gzip_vary on;

In order to load the gzip output compression as a next step you need to restart the nginx server, either by it’s init script if you use one or by killing the old nginx server instances and starting up the nginx server binary again:
I personally use an init script, so restarting nginx for me is done via the cmd:

debian:~# /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Restarting nginx: nginx.

Now to test if the output gzip compression is enabled for nginx, you can simply use telnet

hipo@linux:~$ telnet your-nginx-webserver-domain.com 80
Escape character is '^]'.

After the Escape character is set ‘^]’ appears on your screen type in the blank space:

HEAD / HTTP/1.0

and press enter twice.
The output which should follow should look like:


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:04:43 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 13
Last-Modified: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:04:26 GMT
Connection: close
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Expires: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:04:43 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=604800
Accept-Ranges: bytes

The whole transaction with telnet command issued and the nginx webserver output should look like so:

hipo@linux:~$ telnet your-nginx-webserver-domain.com 80
Trying xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx...
Connected to your-nginx-webserver-domain.com
.Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:04:43 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 13
Last-Modified: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:04:26 GMT
Connection: close
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Expires: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:04:43 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=604800
Accept-Ranges: bytes

The important message in the returned output which confirms your nginx output compression is properly configured is:

Vary: Accept-Encoding

If this message is returned by your nginx server, this means your nginx now will distribute it’s content to it’s clients in compressed format and apart from the browsing boost a lot of server and client bandwitdth will be saved.

Barcodes are dangerous for human freedom! Technology not trustable!

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

This post will be short as I'm starting to think long posts are mostly non-sense. Have you people all wondered of barcoding?
All world stores around the world have now barcoding. Barcode numbers regulations are being orchestrated by certain bodies, we people have no control over. Barcoding makes us dependent on technology as only technology can be used to read and store barcodes. It is technology that issues the barcodes. We have come to a point, where we humans trust more technology than our physical fellows. Trusting technology more than the close people to us is very dangerous. What if technology is not working as we expect it to?
What if there are hidden ways to control technology that we're not aware of?

Technology concepts are getting more and more crazy and abstract.
Thinks about the virtualization for a while. Virtualuzation is being praised loudly these days and everyone is turnning to it thinking it is cheap and realiable? The facts I've seen and the little of experience I had with it were way less than convicable.
Who came with this stupid idea, oh yes I remember IBM came with this insane idea some about 40 years ago … We had sanity for a while not massively adopting IBM's virtualization bulk ideas and now people got crazy again to use a number of virtualization technologies.
If you think for a while Virtualization is unreality (unexistence) of matter over another unreality. The programs that makes computers "runs" are not existent in practice, they only exist in some electricity form. Its just a sort of electric field if you think on it on a conceptual level …
As we trust all our lives nowdays on technology, how do we know this technological stored information is not altered by other fields, how we can be sure it always acts as we think it does and should? Was it tested for at least 40 years before adoption as any new advancement should be.
Well Of course not! Everything new is just placed in our society without too much thinking. Someone gives the money for production, someone else buys it and installs it and its ready to go. Or at least that's how the consumers thinks and we have become all consumers. This is a big LIE we're constantly being convinced in!
It is not ready to work, it is not tested and we don't know what the consequence of it will be!
Technology and Genetically Modified Food are not so different in this that they both can produce unexpected results in our lives. And they're already producing the bad fruits as you should have surely seen.
You can see more and more people are getting sick, more people go to doctor more people have to live daily with medication to live a miserable dishealthy I wouldn't say live but "poor" existence …
Next time they tell you new technology is good for you and will make your life better, Don't believe them! This is not necessery true.
Though todays technology can do you good, In my view the harm seriously exceeds the good.