Question

Can't start Nginx - Job for nginx.service failed

Hello,

This is my fist droplet and I’ve followed all the steps for the initial server setup with Ubuntu, how to setup a firewall with ufw, I’ve installed Nginx and it worked. Then I’ve installed MariaDb and started it, everything was ok, and after I’ve installed PHP I’ve followed “Step Four — Configure Nginx to Use our PHP Processor” from here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-ubuntu-14-04 (although I have Ubuntu 15.04 x64 on my droplet) Did “sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default” and put the same setup it is in their example, but after “sudo service nginx restart” couldn’t restart the Nginx, I’m getting:

myusername@droplet1:~$ sudo service nginx restart
Job for nginx.service failed. See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
myusername@droplet1:~$ systemctl status nginx.service
● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2015-08-12 20:16:25 CEST; 23s ago
  Process: 24221 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 17425 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
myusername@droplet1:~$ journalctl -xe
Hint: You are currently not seeing messages from other users and the system.
      Users in the 'systemd-journal' group can see all messages. Pass -q to
      turn off this notice.
--
-- The start-up result is done.
Aug 12 18:43:25 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[15692]: Starting Shutdown.
-- Subject: Unit UNIT has begun start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- Unit UNIT has begun starting up.
Aug 12 18:43:25 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[15692]: Starting Exit the Session..
-- Subject: Unit UNIT has begun start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- Unit UNIT has begun starting up.
Aug 12 18:43:25 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[15692]: Received SIGRTMIN+24 from P
Aug 12 18:43:34 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[16747]: Trying to run as user insta
Aug 12 18:43:34 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[16748]: pam_unix(systemd-user:sessi
Aug 12 18:46:06 droplet1.mysite.com sudo[16790]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): authentic
Aug 12 19:40:45 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[21873]: Trying to run as user insta
Aug 12 19:41:20 droplet1.mysite.com sudo[21907]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): authentic
Aug 12 20:04:23 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[24038]: Trying to run as user insta
Aug 12 20:09:59 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[24109]: Trying to run as user insta
Aug 12 20:15:47 droplet1.mysite.com systemd[24180]: Trying to run as user insta
lines 1142-1164/1164 (END)

Anyone have an idea about what happens?

Thanks!

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Andrew SB • August 14, 2015

Glad to hear you got it working!

In the future, here’s something that might come in useful. You can check the syntax of Nginx’s configuration files by running:

  1. nginx -t -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

The error output will give you a hint at what the problem is as well as the line number.

Pavel Coocsaghin • May 28, 2019

Try to run the following two commands:

sudo fuser -k 80/tcp

sudo fuser -k 443/tcp

Then execute

sudo service nginx restart

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35868976/nginx-not-started-and-cant-start/51684856#51684856

Bobby Iliev • March 10, 2020

Hello,

In addition to what has already been mentioned, I would recommend following these steps in case that you are having any problems with your nginx server and you are unsure on what the problem is:

  • Check if nginx is running:
systemctl status nginx

If nginx is running you should see something like this:

● nginx.service - The nginx HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2019-11-19 09:37:46 UTC; 2 days ago
     Docs: https://httpd.nginx.org/docs/2.4/

If nginx is not running then the output would look like this:

● nginx.service - The nginx HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Fri 2019-11-22 08:41:01 UTC; 39s ago
     Docs: https://httpd.nginx.org/docs/2.4/
  • If nginx is not running you could start it with:
systemctl start nginx

Then check the status agian and make sure that nginx remains running.

  • If nginx did not start after a reboot, you could enable it so that it starts after the next reboot:
systemctl enable nginx
  • Check your nginx config syntax:
nginx -t

If you get an error, you would need to fix that problem and then you could restart nginx:

systemctl restart nginx
  • If you get Syntax OK when running nginx -t then your confiruation is correct, so I would recommend checking your error logs:
tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log
  • Check the permissions of the files and folders in your document root:

Find the user that your nginx service is running as:

ps auxf | grep nginx

If you are using Ubuntu, the user should be www-data, so you would need to make sure that your files and folders are owned by that user, so nginx could read and write to those files:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/yourdomain.com
  • Check if nginx is binding to the default ports:
netstat -plant | grep '80\|443'
  • Check if ufw allows TCP connections on port 80 and 443:
ufw status

If this is the case, you can follow the steps from this article here on how to configure your ufw:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-firewall-with-ufw-on-ubuntu-18-04

That is pretty much it, with all of the above information you should be able to narrow down the problem.

For more information I would suggest checking out this article here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-troubleshoot-common-site-issues-on-a-linux-server

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby Source: How to Troubleshoot Common Nginx Issues on Linux Server?

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