Install Nginx on Ubuntu

Ubuntu installs Nginx from its own repository with apt; the service starts right away. The outputs come from fresh containers of Ubuntu 24.04 and 22.04, checked on 26 October 2026; the older outputs from Ubuntu 20.04 are marked as such. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so Install Nginx on Debian is much the same, and the other distributions are in Install Nginx on Linux.

Which version you get

Each Ubuntu release keeps its Nginx version and gets only fixes:

For newer versions use the packages from nginx.org, see Newer versions from nginx.org.

Install

Refresh the package lists and see which version apt would install:

sudo apt update

apt-cache policy nginx

nginx: Installed: (none) Candidate: 1.24.0-2ubuntu7.18

sudo apt install nginx

The last lines of the output on Ubuntu 24.04:

… Setting up nginx-common (1.24.0-2ubuntu7.18) ... Setting up nginx (1.24.0-2ubuntu7.18) ...

If Nginx is already there, apt says so and changes nothing. This is Ubuntu 20.04:

Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done nginx is already the newest version (1.18.0-0ubuntu1). 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 226 not upgraded.

Start at boot

The package starts Nginx and enables it at boot. Enabling it again does no harm and shows that systemd knows the service; the output is from Ubuntu 20.04:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Synchronizing state of nginx.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install. Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable nginx

The state: systemctl status nginx, look for active (running). More about the command in systemctl.

Check that Nginx answers

nginx -v

nginx version: nginx/1.24.0 (Ubuntu)

The headers of the start page, with curl:

curl -I http://localhost/

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.24.0 (Ubuntu) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2026 09:17:26 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 615 Last-Modified: Mon, 26 Oct 2026 09:17:05 GMT Connection: keep-alive ETag: "6adf1a91-267" Accept-Ranges: bytes

Hide the version

The Server header above tells everyone the exact version, which helps whoever looks for servers with a known bug. The setting is in nginx.conf, commented out:

grep -n server_tokens /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

21: # server_tokens off;

Remove the #, test and reload:

sudo sed -i 's/# server_tokens off;/server_tokens off;/' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

sudo nginx -t

sudo systemctl reload nginx

The header is then just Server: nginx; Debian 13 ships with this setting on.

Open the firewall with ufw

Ubuntu comes with UFW, switched off. The Nginx package adds three profiles:

sudo ufw app list

Available applications: Nginx Full Nginx HTTP Nginx HTTPS

That list is from a container. On a server with an SSH server installed it also has OpenSSH. Nginx HTTP is port 80, Nginx HTTPS port 443, Nginx Full both:

sudo ufw app info 'Nginx Full'

Profile: Nginx Full Title: Web Server (Nginx, HTTP + HTTPS) Description: Small, but very powerful and efficient web server Ports: 80,443/tcp

Allow SSH first, so that switching ufw on does not cut your own connection, then the web ports, then switch it on:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

sudo ufw enable

Modules on 22.04 and 24.04

The two LTS releases install different sets. Ubuntu 22.04 pulls in nginx-core and six module packages, and the modules are loaded from

ls /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/

50-mod-http-geoip2.conf 50-mod-http-image-filter.conf 50-mod-http-xslt-filter.conf 50-mod-mail.conf 50-mod-stream.conf 70-mod-stream-geoip2.conf

Ubuntu 24.04 installs only nginx and nginx-common, and the folder is empty. A module you need, for example the stream module for TCP proxying, is a package of its own: sudo apt install libnginx-mod-stream.

Next steps

The configuration, the default site in /var/www/html and your own sites in sites-available and sites-enabled are explained in nginx.conf: configuration and sites.

Remove Nginx

remove keeps the configuration:

sudo apt remove nginx

purge deletes it as well:

sudo apt purge nginx nginx-common

On Ubuntu 22.04 add nginx-core and the libnginx-mod packages to the command, or run sudo apt autoremove afterwards.

Article authors: Andrei Olegovich, Klavdiya Kondakova