Compiling nchan on Ubuntu 14.04

If you’re using Ubuntu 14.04, and want to compile a version of the nginx nchan module that works with Redis, this is the guide for you. This is useful if you want to install security updates without recompiling nginx from scratch every time.

1. Install the nginx PPA for your system: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/stable && sudo apt-get update
2. Install nginx from the PPA: sudo apt-get install build-essential nginx-full libnginx-mod-nchan libpcre3-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libgeoip-dev
3. This’ll install an old version of nchan, but it will install most of the dependencies that we need.
4. Test the new nginx version to make sure it works. As we’ve just installed a different version, we might have caused some compatibility issues compared to the standard one (i.e. what’s in the normal repositories)
5. cd /tmp. Download and unpack the nginx we have installed
   wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-$(nginx -v 2>&1 | cut -d "/" -f 2).zip && unzip nginx*
wget https://github.com/slact/nchan/archive/v1.1.14.tar.gz && tar -xf v1.1.14.tar.gz
6. Change directory to nginx. Run configure with the following:
   ./configure --add-dynamic-module=../nchan-1.1.14 --with-cc-opt='-g -O2 -fPIE -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fPIC -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2' --with-ld-opt='-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -fPIE -pie -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,-z,now -fPIC' --prefix=/usr/share/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --pid-path=/run/nginx.pid --modules-path=/usr/lib/nginx/modules --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/scgi --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi --with-debug --with-pcre-jit --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-http_v2_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_slice_module --with-threads --with-http_addition_module --with-http_geoip_module=dynamic --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_image_filter_module=dynamic --with-http_sub_module --with-http_xslt_module=dynamic --with-stream=dynamic --with-stream_ssl_module --with-stream_ssl_preread_module --with-mail=dynamic --with-mail_ssl_module
7. Run make modules
8. Copy objs/ngx_nchan_module.so to /usr/lib/nginx/modules/ngx_nchan_module_new.so.
9. Rename /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/50-mod-nchan.conf to 50-mod-nchan-new.conf, edit it, and change ngx_nchan_module.so to ngx_nchan_module_new.so.
10. Run nginx -t to test that it installed OK.
11. Restart nginx. Done!