nginx not listening to port 80 - linux

Question

I've just installed a Ubuntu 12.04 server and nginx 1.2.7, removed default from sites-enabled and added my own file into sites-available and symlink at sites-enabled. Then restarted nginx.
Problem: However going to the URL does not load the site. netstat -nlp | grep nginx and netstat -nlp | grep 80 both returns no results! lsof -i :80 also returns nothing. A dig from another server returns the correct ip address so it shouldn't be a DNS problem. I was able to connect to apache which I have now stopped its service. nginx logs also show nothing.
How should I troubleshoot this problem?
/etc/nginx/site-available/mysite.com
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.mysite.com mysite.com *.mysite.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
root /var/www/mysite/public;
index index.php index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args ;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_read_timeout 300;
}
}

Answer 1

I had this same problem, the solution was that I had not symlinked my siteconf file correctly. Try running vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.com—can you get to it? I was getting "Permission Denied."
If not run:
rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.com
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.com

Answer 2

If your logs are silent on the issue, you may not be including the sites-enabled directory. One simple way to tell that the site is being loaded is to set the error/access log path within your server block to a unique path, reload nginx, and check if the files are created.
Ensure the following include directive exists within the http context in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.
http {
...
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Answer 3

I've found it helpful to approach debugging nginx with the following steps:
1... Make sure nginx is running.
ps aux | grep nginx
2... Check for processes already bound to the port in question.
lsof -n -i:80
3... Make sure nginx has been reloaded.
sudo nginx -t
sudo nginx -s reload
On Mac, brew services restart nginx is not sufficient to reload nginx.
4... Try creating simple responses manually to make sure your location path isn't messed up. This is especially helpful when problems arise while using proxy_pass to forward requests to other running apps.
location / {
add_header Content-Type text/html;
return 200 'Here I am!';
}

Answer 4

I ran into the same problem, I got a Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED error when connecting over HTTP, but fine over HTTPS. Ran netstat -tulpn and saw nginx not binding to port 80 for IPv4. Done everything described here. Turned out to be something very stupid:
Make sure the sites-available file with the default_server is actually enabled.
Hope this saved some other poor idiot out there some time.

Answer 5

You are probably binding nginx to port 80 twice. Is that your full config file? Don't you have another statement listening to port 80?

Answer 6

A semi-colon ; missing in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf for exemple on the line before include /etc/nginx/servers-enabled/*; can just bypass this intruction and nginx -t check will be successful anyway.
So just check that all instructions in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf are ended with a semi-colon ;.

Answer 7

I had faced the same problem over the server, here I am listing the how I had solved it :
Step 1 :: Installing the Ngnix
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx
Step 2 – Adjusting the Firewall
sudo ufw app list
You should get a listing of the application profiles:
Output
Available applications:
Nginx Full
Nginx HTTP
Nginx HTTPS
OpenSSH
As you can see, there are three profiles available for Nginx:
Nginx Full: This profile opens both port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic) and port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic)
Nginx HTTP: This profile opens only port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic)
Nginx HTTPS: This profile opens only port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic)
Since I haven’t configured SSL for our server yet in this guide, we will only need to allow traffic on port 80.You can enable this by typing:
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
You can verify the change by typing:
sudo ufw status
Step 3 – Checking your Web Server
systemctl status nginx
Now Check port 80 , It worked for me hope will work for you as well.

Answer 8

Have you checked if your nginx binary really exists? please check if
#whereis nginx
outputs the binary path and check this path with your init script from /etc/init.d/nginx. e.g.
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/nginx
(In my init script "test -x $DAEMON || exit 0" is invoked and in any case this script returned nothing - my binary was completely missing)

Answer 9

While we all think we don't make silly mistakes, we do.
So, if you are looking into NGINX issues and all signs are showing it should work then you should take a step away from the files and look downstream.
System Firewall, Hardware Firewall, Nat router/firewall.
For myself this issue was my router, I run a home lab and so I can access services behind my router from afar I use NGINX to reverse proxy as my router only handles incoming based on IP and doesn't do any handling of hostnames, I'm sure this is all fairly normal.
In any case my issue cropped up as I was securing my network a few days ago, removing some port forwarding that isnt needed any longer and I accidentally removed port 80.
Yes it was as simple as forwarding that port again to NGINX and all was fixed.
I will now walk away with my head hung in extreme shame though I leave this answer to show my gratitude to the people in this thread that lead me to find my own error.
So thank you.

Answer 10

In my case those network command's outputs showed nginx was correctly binding to port 80, yet the ports weren't externally accessible or visible with nmap.
While I suspected a firewall, it turns out that old iptables rules on the machine were redirecting traffic from those ports and conflicting with nginx. Use sudo iptables-save to view all currently applicable rules.

Answer 11

I am facing the same issue. Just reload the nginx help me
sudo nginx -t
If you got error then just delete the log.txt file
then,
sudo nginx -s reload