Use SkyWalking to perform tracing analysis on NGINX

Preparations

1. Log on Tracing Analysis console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Cluster Configurations. In the top navigation bar, select a region.
3. On the Cluster Configurations page, click the Access point information tab. Then, turn on Show Token for the Cluster Information parameter.
4. Set the Client parameter to SkyWalking.
5. In the Related Information column of the table in the lower part, click the copy icon next to the endpoint that you want to use.
   Note If you deploy your application in an Alibaba Cloud production environment, select a VPC endpoint. Otherwise, select a public endpoint.

Configure the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module by using a Docker image

Use a pre-built Docker image to configure the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module.

1. Pull the image from the registry.

   docker pull registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/public-community/skywalking-nginx-lua:0.2

2. Run NGINX in a Docker container.

   docker run --rm  -p 80:80 -e "BACKEND_URL=$skywalking-nginx-lua"  -d registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/public-community/skywalking-nginx-lua:0.2

   Replace $skywalking-nginx-lua with the NGINX LUA endpoint that you copy and save in Preparations.

   Example:

   docker run --rm  -p 80:80 -e "BACKEND_URL=http://tracing-analysis-dc-hz.aliyuncs.com/adapt_123@abc_456@efg"  -d registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/public-community/skywalking-nginx-lua:0.2

3. Visit NGINX.
   • Enter localhost/nginx.conf in the address bar of a browser.
   • Run the curl "localhost/nginx.conf" command.

Configure the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module by using a Dockerfile

1. Download a Dockerfile.

   wget https://arms-apm.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/demo/nginx-skywalking-docker.tgz
   tar -xzvf nginx-skywalking-docker.tgz
   cd nginx-lua

2. Build the Dockerfile.

   docker build --rm --tag skywalking-nginx-lua:0.2 .

3. Run NGINX in a Docker container.

   docker run --rm  -p 80:80 -e "BACKEND_URL=$skywalking-nginx-lua"  -d skywalking-nginx-lua:0.2

   Replace $skywalking-nginx-lua with the NGINX LUA endpoint that you copy and save in Preparations.

   Example:

   docker run --rm  -p 80:80 -e "BACKEND_URL=http://tracing-analysis-dc-hz.aliyuncs.com/adapt_123@abc_456@efg"  -d skywalking-nginx-lua:0.2

4. Visit NGINX.
   • Enter localhost/nginx.conf in the address bar of a browser.
   • Run the curl "localhost/nginx.conf" command.

Configure the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module on an ECS instance

In this example, CentOS 7.0 is installed on the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance.

1. Configure the runtime environment for LUA.
   1. Install required tools.

      yum install gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel -y
      yum install readline-devel -y
      yum install ncurses-devel -y

   2. Download and install LUA 5.3.5.

      cd /usr/local/src
      wget http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.3.5.tar.gz
      tar -zxvf lua-5.3.5.tar.gz
      cd /usr/local/src/lua-5.3.5 && echo "INSTALL_TOP= /usr/local/lua_5.3.5" >> Makefile && make linux && make install

   3. Download and install LuaRocks 2.2.2.

      cd /usr/local/src
      wget http://keplerproject.github.io/luarocks/releases/luarocks-2.2.2.tar.gz
      tar -xzvf luarocks-2.2.2.tar.gz
      cd luarocks-2.2.2
      ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/luarocks_2.2.2 --with-lua=/usr/local/lua_5.3.5
      make build
      make install

   4. Add the following lines to the /etc/profile file:

      export LUA_HOME=/usr/local/lua_5.3.5
      export LUALOCKS_HOME=/usr/local/luarocks_2.2.2
      PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:$LUALOCKS_HOME/bin:$LUA_HOME/bin
      export PATH
      export LUA_PATH="$LUALOCKS_HOME/share/lua/5.3/?.lua;?.lua;;"
      export LUA_CPATH="$LUALOCKS_HOME/lib/lua/5.3/?.so;?.so;;"

   5. Update the /etc/profile file.

      source /etc/profile

   6. Install LUA.

      luarocks install luasocket
      luarocks install lua-resty-jit-uuid
      luarocks install luaunit
      luarocks install lua-cjson 2.1.0-1

   7. Verify that LUA is installed.

      luarocks list

2. Download and install OpenResty NGINX.

   yum install pcre-devel openssl-devel gcc curl postgresql-devel
   cd /usr/local/src
   wget -c https://openresty.org/download/openresty-1.15.8.1rc2.tar.gz
   tar -zxvf openresty-1.15.8.1rc2.tar.gz
   cd openresty-1.15.8.1rc2
   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/openresty/ --with-http_stub_status_module --with-luajit --without-http_redis2_module --with-http_iconv_module --with-http_postgres_module --with-stream && gmake && gmake install
   export PATH=/usr/local/openresty/nginx/sbin:$PATH

3. Download and install the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module.
   1. Download and decompress the installation package of the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module.

      cd /usr/local/skywalking-nginx-lua
      wget https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/apache/skywalking/nginx-lua/0.5.0/skywalking-nginx-lua-0.5.0-src.tgz
      tar -xzvf skywalking-nginx-lua-0.5.0-src.tgz

   2. Modify the lua_package_path and startBackendTimer variables in the nginx.conf file.
      Example:

      • Set the lua_package_path variable to /usr/local/skywalking-nginx-lua/lib/?.lua;;".
      • Set the startBackendTimer variable to require("skywalking.client"):startBackendTimer("http://tracing-analysis-dc-hz.aliyuncs.com/adapt_***").
   3. Start the SkyWalking NGINX LUA module.

      nginx -c /usr/local/skywalking-nginx-lua/examples/nginx.conf

View the results

Wait a moment. Then, log on to the Tracing Analysis console. If monitoring data is displayed, the tracing is successful. If you have questions about how to monitor NGINX, contact the DingTalk account osfriend.