Question

nginx syntax error - listen directive not allowed

Posted on January 1, 2021
Let's Encrypt Nginx LEMP WordPress DigitalOcean
Asked by patrickb

Hello,

I have been following through a few different articles, but am now getting an error.

"listen" directive not allowed here...

listen [::]:443 ssl; # managed by certbot

After I set up certbot it was fine, so I’m not sure what else I have done to affect it.

The only change I have made to the file is adding WordPress bits as below.

    location = /favicon.ico { log_not_found off; access_log off; }
    location = /robots.txt { log_not_found off; access_log off; allow all; }
    location ~* \.(css|gif|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|png)$ {
        expires max;
        log_not_found off;

And…

    location / {
        #try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;

Any help is much appreciated.

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• January 1, 2021

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

Can you run the following command to test your Nginx config syntax:

sudo nginx -t

And then share the output here.

Also, can you share your whole Nginx server block here as well?

Regards, Bobby

patrickb • January 2, 2021

Thanks @bobbyiliev for your assistance.

server {

        root /var/www/domain.com;
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name domain.com www.domain.com;

        location = /favicon.ico { log_not_found off; access_log off;}
        location = /robots.txt { log_not_found off; access_log off; allow all; }
        location ~* \.(css|gif|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|png)$ {
                expires max;
                log_not_found off;
        }

        location / {
        #       try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
                deny all;

        }

    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot


}
server {
    if ($host = www.domain.com) {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot

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drwxr-x---  6 general general 4.0K Dec 31 19:11 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 root    root    4.0K Jan  2 14:13 ..
drwxr-x---  2 general general 4.0K Dec 31 18:58 html
-rw-r-----  1 general general  405 Feb  6  2020 index.php
-rw-r-----  1 general general  20K Feb 12  2020 license.txt
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drwxr-x---  4 general general 4.0K Dec  8 22:13 wp-content
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drwxr-x--- 25 general general  12K Dec  8 22:13 wp-includes
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-rw-r-----  1 general general  21K Nov 12 14:43 wp-settings.php
-rw-r-----  1 general general  31K Sep 30 21:54 wp-signup.php
-rw-r-----  1 general general 4.7K Oct  8 21:15 wp-trackback.php
-rw-r-----  1 general general 3.2K Jun  8  2020 xmlrpc.php