nginx works with ip but gives 'Welcome to nginx' error with domain name

Question

I have a Django application on an Ubuntu 22.04 droplet with Gunicorn and Nginx. I added DNS for my domain (ifbt.farm), which is resolving to my ip address (24.199.74.74). If I configure nginx with

server_name 24.199.74.74; and sudo systemctl restart nginx

It proxies the request to Gunicorn correctly so I see my application when I visit https://24.199.74.74

but if I configure it with

server_name ifbt.farm www.ifbt.farm; and sudo systemctl restart nginx

It gives the ‘Welcome to nginx’ error page when I visit https://ifbt.farm. My Django settings has

ALLOWED_HOSTS = [‘ifbt.farm’, ‘www.ifbt.farm’, ‘24.199.74.74’]

This link on stack overflow notes a similar problem, and the OP solved it by commenting out the server_name line in sites-available/default, which he said was shadowing it. I tried that, but it didn’t change anything in my case.

Thanks for any thoughts on this!

Dow Drake · Accepted Answer

This must have been a DNS resolution issue. About two hours after I posted this question (two days ago), it started working correctly without me making any further changes! Thanks, Bobby for following up!

Bobby · Answer

Hi there, It looks like that you’ve managed to get it all working! Happy to see that. If you have a chance feel free to share your solution here with the community. In general, this issue could be due to a number of reasons. Here are some debugging steps: Check Your Nginx Configurations: Make sure you have the correct settings in your Nginx configurations file for the Django application. This file is typically located in /etc/nginx/sites-available/ directory. Here is an example of what your configuration should look like: server { listen 80; server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com; location / { include proxy_params; proxy_pass http://unix:/path/to/your/gunicorn.sock; } listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.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 } Please replace /path/to/your/gunicorn.sock with the path to your Gunicorn socket file. Check Your DNS Settings: Double-check your DNS settings and make sure that your domain name is properly pointing to your droplet’s IP address. There could be a delay between setting the DNS record and it taking effect due to DNS propagation. Check Server Block Symbolic Link: When you create a server block file in the /etc/nginx/sites-available/ directory, you must create a symbolic link to it in the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory for Nginx to serve it. To create a symbolic link, you can use the ln command: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourconfig /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ Replace yourconfig with the name of your Nginx configuration file. Check Nginx Errors: Look for errors in the Nginx error log. The log file is typically located at /var/log/nginx/error.log. You can tail the file by typing: sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log This command will display the last few entries in the file and then display new entries as they are added. Restart Nginx: After making changes, remember to restart or reload Nginx: sudo systemctl restart nginx Here is also a nice tutorial on how to troubleshoot common Nginx problems: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-troubleshoot-common-nginx-errors Best, Bobby

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nginx works with ip but gives 'Welcome to nginx' error with domain name

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