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Command-line parameters

nginx supports the following command-line parameters:

• -? | -h — print help for command-line parameters.
• -c file — use an alternative configuration file instead of a default file.
• -e file — use an alternative error log file to store the log instead of a default file (1.19.5). The special value stderr selects the standard error file.
• -g directives — set global configuration directives, for example,

  nginx -g "pid /var/run/nginx.pid; worker_processes `sysctl -n hw.ncpu`;"
  

• -p prefix — set nginx path prefix, i.e. a directory that will keep server files (default value is /usr/local/nginx).
• -q — suppress non-error messages during configuration testing.
• -s signal — send a signal to the master process. The argument signal can be one of:
  • stop — shut down quickly
  • quit — shut down gracefully
  • reload — reload configuration, start the new worker process with a new configuration, gracefully shut down old worker processes.
  • reopen — reopen log files
• -t — test the configuration file: nginx checks the configuration for correct syntax, and then tries to open files referred in the configuration.
• -T — same as -t, but additionally dump configuration files to standard output (1.9.2).
• -v — print nginx version.
• -V — print nginx version, compiler version, and configure parameters.