Someone posted this pretty simple script today. Might work on older Ubuntu versions: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/web2py/moZqFqZ8eHo
Are you on a cloud server that you can rebuild? If so, I'd recommend a rebuild and start from scratch. If your server comes with Apache pre-installed that's probably a fine way to go. I was not experienced with either Apache or Nginx and found Nginx a *lot* easier to understand. And it seems pretty unanimous that Nginx is more performant across the board.
