Using Cygwin to run nginx on Windows

Question

Is it possible to run a Linux installation of nginx from Cygwin? Or should I run the Windows version? Basically I want to be able to restart Cygwin from command prompt instead of having to end the process in the task manager when I change the config file. Windows nginx doesn't support this but Linux nginx does.

Answer 1

If all you want to do is restart something from the command line in Windows, you can terminate a running process via command line with the taskkill command, or the stop-process cmdlet in Powershell.

I don't see nginx in list of Cygwin packages so you'd have to download the nginx sources and compile under cygwin for it to work.

Answer 2

I use the chocolatey package manager with nginx-service for running nginx on Windows.
It uses nssm to manage nginx as a service.

Then, it's as simple as opening cmd and 'nssm restart nginx-service' to restart nginx.
Installation is by loading chocolatey, restarting your terminal and doing

choco install nginx-service

Note:
I am fully aware that this is running the natively compiled for Windows nginx, not a version compiled against Cygwin. However, it performs all the tasks needed very well.

Answer 3

Updating this because this is the first entry for "cygwin start nginx" when searching with google.

• It is not "a Linux installation of nginx from Cygwin". It is a version of nginx compiled against the libraries that are compiled against the cygwin DLLs. See: https://cygwin.com/index.html

• Since Cygwin provides a version, it better be possible.

• The nginx binary is in /usr/sbin. That doesn't show up in your path unless you add it.

• According to http://nginx.org/en/docs/windows.html you can do this at the windows console, just like the Cygwin console:

    nginx -s stop   fast shutdown
    nginx -s quit   graceful shutdown
    nginx -s reload changing configuration, starting new worker processes with a new configuration, graceful shutdown of old worker processes
    nginx -s reopen re-opening log files

(OK, so "code blocK doesn't behave the way I'd expect. Had to tag it manually)

• Accordingly the answer to MY question (dropped here so that others might benefit):

/usr/sbin/nginx.exe