how nginx works i think, by holly:
so you have programs on your server that think they're talking to the internet. like my mastodon tihnks it's talking to the internet directly. but it's not because that would be bad. instead you have nginx sitting between them. the internet talks to nginx and then nginx tells mastodon what it said, and then whatever mastodon says back nginxs says to the internet
@monorail why would that be bad
-F
explainy
@Felthry @monorail one common reason is because nginx can run as root so your actual server that might have holes in it doesn't need to
root is the highest permission level on linux, and you typically need to use them to have a server that listens on ports browsers actually try to connect to
basically, nginx is heavily battle tested, so there's a smaller chance that someone can exploit it and gain root privileges than whatever random and less-tested thing you put behind it
