Nginx startup scripts

[Mark Rogers]

I'm considering nginx as an upgrade from Apache, on a virtual server 
with many virtual hosts. I have no nginx experience (yet!)

I know that there are many reasons why nginx is likely better than 
Apache in my environment, but on the other hand "if it isn't broken, 
don't fix it". However, there is one aspect that I consider broken, so 
if nginx handles things differently that could be the reason to switch.

With Apache, if the config file has an error in it, Apache will error 
and stop. The config test doesn't catch all possible errors (eg I had a 
situation where an SSL certificate was updated without the SSL key, and 
the config test showed no problems, but a config reload took the server 
offline for several minutes while the problem was resolved).

How robust is nginx?

To me, it seems simple: there should be startup scripts that start the 
server, and roll-back to a known-good config if the current config 
fails. But whatever the method, I'm looking for a server which has 
considered this and found a solution to it.

Note: I am looking to use a distro package (to make maintenance easy) so 
I'm not really looking for custom scripts, although that's not being 
ruled out. Distro will likely be Ubuntu server.

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