nginx 1.22

NGINX Open Source 1.22 was the stable-line consolidation of changes previously developed in the 1.21 mainline. Relative to the preceding stable line, it incorporated accumulated feature work, compatibility updates, and defect fixes, including support for building with OpenSSL 3.0. It was an incremental server release rather than an architectural rewrite, so existing HTTP, reverse-proxy, FastCGI, stream, and module configurations generally remained familiar, but upgrades still require configuration and traffic testing.

This cycle has reached end of life, so upstream no longer provides fixes for newly discovered security issues, defects, or compatibility problems in this line. Remaining on it increases exposure where NGINX is internet-facing or terminates TLS, and can make it harder to adopt current operating-system, OpenSSL, and platform packages. A distribution vendor may independently backport fixes, but that support must be verified for the exact package in use; an old upstream version number alone is not proof of its patch level. The longer the line is retained, the more likely an eventual upgrade will combine NGINX changes with unrelated operating-system and dependency changes, increasing migration risk.

Identify the installed package source, exact build options, dynamically loaded modules, linked TLS library, and any distribution backports. Choose a currently supported NGINX release line that fits the organization’s stable-versus-mainline policy, and confirm that all required third-party modules are available and compatible before changing production hosts. Rehearse the upgrade in a representative environment: validate configuration with nginx -t, test reload and rollback procedures, and exercise TLS, HTTP/2, proxying, upstream failover, DNS resolution, logging, rate limiting, and any stream workloads. Upgrade through the operating-system package channel where possible, or rebuild from supported source with controlled module versions. Do not treat rebuilding the old 1.22 source against a newer TLS library as a substitute for moving to a supported NGINX line.