How to Install OpenResty on Rocky Linux 8

OpenResty is an Nginx-based web platform that can run Lua scripts using its LuaJIT engine. It has many built-in Nginx modules that can make it a powerful web app server. OpenResty allows you to use Lua scripts inside the Nginx conf files and write a high-performance web application in Lua without installing any package.

In this post, we will show you how to install OpenResty on Rocky Linux 8.

Prerequisites

A server running Rocky Linux 8 on the Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform
A root password configured on your server

Step 1 – Create Atlantic.Net Cloud Server

First, log in to your Atlantic.Net Cloud Server. Create a new server, choosing Rocky Linux 8 as the operating system with at least 2GB RAM. Connect to your Cloud Server via SSH and log in using the credentials highlighted at the top of the page.

Once you are logged in to your server, run the following command to update your base system with the latest available packages.

dnf update -y

Step 2 – Install OpenResty on Rocky Linux 8

By default, the OpenResty package is not included in the Rocky Linux 8 default repo, so you will need to add the OpenResty repo to your system. You can add it with the following command:

wget https://openresty.org/package/centos/openresty.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/openresty.repo

Once the repo is added, run the following command to install OpenResty on Rocky Linux 8.

dnf install openresty -y

After the installation, verify the OpenResty version using the following command:

openresty -v

You will get the following output:

nginx version: openresty/1.19.9.1

You can also install the OpenResty CLI utility using the following command:

dnf install openresty-resty -y

Next, start and enable the OpenResty service using the following command:

systemctl start openresty
systemctl enable openresty

You can also check the status of OpenResty with the following command:

systemctl status openresty

You will get the following output:

● openresty.service - The OpenResty Application Platform
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/openresty.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2022-01-29 06:07:47 UTC; 5s ago
  Process: 8788 ExecStart=/usr/local/openresty/nginx/sbin/nginx (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 8787 ExecStartPre=/usr/local/openresty/nginx/sbin/nginx -t (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 8790 (nginx)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 11411)
   Memory: 2.4M
   CGroup: /system.slice/openresty.service
           ├─8790 nginx: master process /usr/local/openresty/nginx/sbin/nginx
           └─8791 nginx: worker process

Jan 29 06:07:47 rockylinux systemd[1]: Starting The OpenResty Application Platform...
Jan 29 06:07:47 rockylinux nginx[8787]: nginx: the configuration file /usr/local/openresty/nginx/conf/nginx.conf syntax is ok
Jan 29 06:07:47 rockylinux nginx[8787]: nginx: configuration file /usr/local/openresty/nginx/conf/nginx.conf test is successful
Jan 29 06:07:47 rockylinux systemd[1]: openresty.service: Failed to parse PID from file /usr/local/openresty/nginx/logs/nginx.pid: Invalid ar>
Jan 29 06:07:47 rockylinux systemd[1]: Started The OpenResty Application Platform.

Also Read

How to Install and Configure Nginx Webserver on Oracle Linux 8

Step 3 – Create a Project with OpenResty

In this section, we will create a sample hello world project using OpenResty.

First, create a directory with the following command:

mkdir resty

Next, change the directory to resty and create the other required directories using the following command:

cd resty
mkdir logs conf

Next, create an Nginx configuration file:

nano conf/nginx.conf

Add the following code:

worker_processes  1;
error_log logs/error.log;
events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
    server {
        listen 8080;
        location / {
            default_type text/html;
            content_by_lua_block {
                ngx.say("<p>hello, world</p>")
            }
        }
    }
}

Save and close the file, then export the Nginx path with the following command:

PATH=/usr/local/openresty/nginx/sbin:$PATH
export PATH

Next, start the Nginx server with the following command:

nginx -p `pwd`/ -c conf/nginx.conf

This will start an Nginx server on port 8080. You can check it with the ss command:

ss -antpl | grep 8080

You will get the following output:

LISTEN 0      128          0.0.0.0:8080      0.0.0.0:*    users:(("nginx",pid=8806,fd=8),("nginx",pid=8805,fd=8))

Step 4 – Verify OpenResty Project

You can now verify your OpenResty hello world project using the URL http://your-server-ip:8080. You should see the following page:
Open Restry Dashboard
You can also use the curl command to test your project:

curl http://localhost:8080/

You will get the following output:

hello, world

Conclusion

In the above guide, we explained how to install OpenResty on Rocky Linux 8. We also created a sample hello world project and host it using OpenResty. Start working on the OpenResty platform today on dedicated hosts from Atlantic.Net!

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