nginx in ubuntu 9.04 aka jaunty jackalope is compiled without gzip_static support (Bug report). Waiting for it to be resolved seems like to be waiting for ubuntu karmic koala.
gzip_static enables nginx to check for pre gzip’d files so it doesn’t have to gzip the same content over and over again, which saves you a lot of cpu on high traffic sites. Say you request /foo/index.html with Accept-Encoding: gzip and there is a file in your doc root foo/index.html.gz, nginx will then take that index.html.gz and serve it instead of gziping foo/index.html on the fly.
Upgrading and compiling deb packages seems to be easier than ever, I found a tutorial on the ubuntu forum which explains in just a few steps on how to always have the latest nginx available in a ubuntu fashion (conf in /etc/nginx, startup script in /etc/init.d and so on). I guess the tutorial works for 0.6.x versions aswell as 0.7.x. I only tried 0.7, not that I need any specific 0.7 features but I like to have the latest and greatest :)
Anyway if you still don’t want to compile it, you can download nginx_0.7.54-0ubuntu1_i386.deb from my public files section.
$ wget http://god.morgon.nu/public/nginx-jaunty/nginx_0.7.54-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i nginx_0.7.54-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
I don’t have any energy to put up an apt repository but chances are I will keep publishing new nginx packages on there. Keep in mind I only have 10 mbit up, feel free to mirror it and include a link back to this post or post a mirror link in the comments. Also feel free to post comments if you like this or if you have any feedback.
[...] files, so you don’t need to waste cpu on gziping the same html over and over again. With gzip_static in nginx this is possible. If you request /foo/index.html with accept-encoding: gzip and have gzip_static [...]
[...] the same html over and over again on requests with the Accept-Encoding: gzip header. Now that I found love with gzip_static it’s super easy to serve precompressed .gz files with nginx. The feature it [...]