My general nginx conf file (for debian/ubuntu)

nginx.conf

user www-data;
worker_processes  1;

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
    use epoll;
}

http {
    include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;

    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;

    keepalive_timeout 65;
    proxy_read_timeout 200;
    proxy_next_upstream error;

    gzip on;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    gzip_disable "msie6";
    gzip_types text/plain text/css text/xml
               application/xml application/atom+xml
               text/javascript application/x-javascript;

    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}