Question

connect() failed (111: Connection refused) while connecting to upstream

Posted on October 4, 2023
DigitalOcean Droplets
Asked by stelian

Hi all,

Today the node server was throwing a 502 Bad Gateway error, after checking the error file we have the following message:

2023/10/04 11:43:12 [error] 48367#48367: *24 connect() failed (111: Connection refused) while connecting to upstream, client: 188.27.129.65 request: “GET /api HTTP/2.0”, upstream: “http://127.0.0.1:8080/api”

We already checked the

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• October 5, 2023

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

The error message connect() failed (111: Connection refused) while connecting to upstream means that Nginx tried to pass a request to the upstream server but was unable to establish a connection.

This is most likely caused by one of those two things:

Node Server Not Running: Ensure that the node server is running. Check the process:
```
ps aux | grep node
```
If it’s not running, you will have to start your app again. If it is running, check its logs for any errors and feel free to share them here.
Port Misconfiguration: Ensure that the node server is running on port 8080, as Nginx is trying to forward requests to that port.