nginx is a really powerful software, but it requires non-trivial configuration and its own working directory. Command-line configuration is possible but verbose.

inginx creates a temporary working directory and assembles an nginx configuration optimized for common use cases.

[!TIP] The name “inginx” is derived from “instant nginx”

Examples

Serve file system

Serve a directory ./dir on 8787

inginx --serve ./dir --listen 0.0.0.0:8787

Output:

Running /usr/bin/freenginx in /tmp/tmpu8151mtc
127.0.0.1 - - [25/Aug/2025:11:18:50 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 263 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0"
....

Reverse proxy

Start a reverse proxy up to https://echo.free.beeceptor.com on 8080

inginx --reverse https://echo.free.beeceptor.com --listen 0.0.0.0:8080

Output:

Running /usr/bin/freenginx in /tmp/tmpo66xmvm_
127.0.0.1 - - [25/Aug/2025:11:21:03 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 844 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0"
...

Common Flags

• --serve <directory> - Serve a local filesystem directory

• --reverse <remote> - Set up a reverse proxy

• --listen <address[:port]> - Tell Nginx what address/port to use

Installation

This is a self-contained script that has no dependencies, besides nginx itself. It is aiming to work on as old Python as 3.7.

Managed installation (uvx, pipx)

Ideal solution, but needs uvx, or pipx pre-installed.

uvx inginx --help

pipx install inginx
inginx --help

pip

pip install --user inginx --break-system-packages

[!WARNING] This is generally not recommended. It will work and not break anything in this case because inginx does not have any dependencies.

Manual

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/richard-hajek/inginx/refs/heads/main/inginx/inginx.py -O ~/.local/bin
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/inginx

[!WARNING] Check that ~/.local/bin is in your path by doing echo $PATH and checking, with your eyes, if '.local/bin' is there

If not, good luck, have fun, see https://askubuntu.com/questions/440691/add-a-binary-to-my-path for detailed instructions how to manage your $PATH

Advanced configuration

This tool is not indended for advanced configuration. It will however provide you with a good starting point. If you want to further customize the nginx instance, do

mkdir ./prefix
cd ./prefix
inginx <your configuration> --dry > nginx.conf

and then make any changes you want to the generated nginx.conf

And run your nginx with

nginx -p $(realpath .) -c $(realpath ./nginx.conf)

nginx binary

This software officially supports and recommends freenginx. It was built and tested for freenginx/1.29.0