使用nginx，在OS X系统上建立文件服务器

Sometimes you may want to access certain files on one computer from other LAN clients using web browsers, for example, a directory of PDF files, or some MP4/MOV videos that can be easily streamed through HTML5 Video.

To make things easy, we can set up an nginx server with Nginx Fancy Index module to serve certain directories on one or more filesystems on your OS X system.

We can install all required software using homebrew and we need to do some hacks on the forumla. The following setup were tested on OS X 10.10.

First, tap homebrew-nginx:

$ brew tap homebrew/nginx

As of writing, the version of fancyindex-nginx-module provided by this formula is 0.3.2, but we need 0.3.3 which allows sorting elements by name (default), modification time. So we need to edit the formula file:

$ brew edit fancyindex-nginx-module

Or, use a text editor to open the formula file:

$ vim /usr/local/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-nginx/Formula/fancyindex-nginx-module.rb

and change https://github.com/aperezdc/ngx-fancyindex/archive/v0.3.2.tar.gz into https://github.com/aperezdc/ngx-fancyindex/archive/v0.3.3.tar.gz.

Then, install nginx by building with the Fancy Index Module:

$ brew install nginx-full --with-fancyindex-module

If brew complains about SHA1 error, then you have to modify the sha1 value of the previous fomula to match the actual sha1 in the error output.

Download FancyIndex Theme to /usr/local/etc/nginx/fancyindex:

$ git clone https://github.com/TheInsomniac/Nginx-Fancyindex-Theme.git /usr/local/etc/nginx/fancyindex

All that remains to be done is configuration. Assume you want to serve /path/to/movies and /another/path/to/pdf directories, you can use alias movies and pdf to point to these locations. Edit /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf and modify the server block under http block:

server {
    listen       8080;
    server_name  localhost;

    fancyindex on;
    fancyindex_exact_size off;
    fancyindex_localtime on;
    fancyindex_header "/fancyindex/header.html";
    fancyindex_footer "/fancyindex/footer.html";
    fancyindex_ignore "fancyindex";

    location /movies {
        alias /path/to/movies/;
    }

    location /pdf {
        alias /another/path/to/pdf/;
    }

    location /fancyindex/ {
        alias /usr/local/etc/nginx/fancyindex/;
    }
}

The config above is just a minimum configuration. You may add extra configurations (e.g. error_log, error_page) according to your need. Note the paths for the alias directives, there must be trailing slashes, such as alias/path/to/movies/.

Start nginx:

$ nginx

If you make any changes to the nginx.conf, remember to reload:

$ nginx -s reload

You can check whether the port 8080 is in the LISTEN state:

$ sudo netstat -anf inet -p tcp | grep LISTEN

Finally, if you want to keep your firewall on and nginx trusted, run the following command:

$ brew install coreutils  # for greadlink command
$ sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --add $(greadlink -f /usr/local/bin/nginx)

You can test from local http://127.0.0.1:8080/movies as well as http://youripaddress:8080/movies and http://youripaddress:8080/pdf from a browser on your LAN clients.