configuring nginx to serve static files from a custom directory

Question

So I want to serve static files from a specific folder on a specific port with Nginx.

$ nginx -c `pwd`/nginx.conf

my local nginx.conf goes like:

http {
    server {
        root .;
        listen 8080;
    }
}

but i'm getting this error:

nginx: [emerg] no "events" section in configuration

I can see the events section in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf but I don't want to have to duplicate all the configuration. There has to be a way to use the default settings and just different port number for a specific folder.

What am I missing to get this to work?

Answer 1

You need to specify minimal events block:

events {
    worker_connections        1024;
}

Root needs to be declared with absolute path on the filesystem.