Using nginx modules with chef nginx cookbook - nginx

Question

I'm trying to use chef to provision a centos webserver with nginx. I want to use the http_auth_request_module and the headers_more_module. My role looks like this:
{
"name" : "cms-aws",
"description" : "a role to deploy cms to aws",
"default_attributes" : {
"nginx" : {
"source" : {
"modules" : ["nginx::http_auth_request_module","nginx::headers_more_module"]
}
}
},
"run_list" : [
"runit",
"python",
"build-essential",
"gunicorn",
"nginx::source",
"openssl",
"yum",
"git",
"yum-epel",
"my-custom-cookbook",
"supervisor"
]
}
However, when I run nginx -V on the server, those modules aren't listed, and nginx complains when I use the auth_request directive in my conf file.
I've also tried with the following attributes, but chef couldn't find those cookbooks when I ran it:
"default_attributes" : {
"nginx" : {
"source" : {
"modules" : ["http_auth_request_module","headers_more_module"]
}
}
},
Edit:
So I've determined that the AMI I was running this on already had nginx installed. So when systemctl starts nginx it's hitting the preexisting one, and not the one chef installs. I tried modifying my attributes as such:
"default_attributes" : {
"nginx" : {
"source" : {
"modules" : ["nginx::http_auth_request_module","nginx::headers_more_module"]
},
"binary" : "/usr/sbin/nginx"
}
},
but chef still installs nginx at /opt/nginx-1.6.2/sbin/nginx, any idea how to correct this?
Edit edit: Turns out nginx is not installed out of the box on this AMI, so the cookbook installs it at /usr/sbin/nginx, yet when I run nginx -V the desired modules aren't listed. When I run /opt/nginx-1.6.2/sbin/nginx -V it lists the requested modules.

Answer 1

Even if nginx was installed from a package, the nginx cookbook will create an runit service starting nginx from /opt/nginx-1.6.2/sbin/. You can manage it with the runit's sv command
sudo sv status nginx
sudo sv up nginx
When compiling nginx from source in chef, it makes sense to forcefully remove any existing packages in the same recipe:
package("nginx") { action :remove }
Since your nginx appears to be compiled correctly (/opt/nginx-1.6.2/sbin/nginx -V produces the correct result), the above should be enough to fix the issue.