Common Nginx Connection Errors: A Troubleshooting Guide
Discover the most common Nginx connection errors in our blog post and learn how to effectively resolve them. From checking your Nginx server status to adjusting your firewall settings, we provide practical solutions for smooth web server connectivity. Dive into our guide and optimize your Nginx web server performance today!
Introduction
Nginx is a popular web server that hosts many large, high-traffic websites on the internet. However, Nginx connection errors can be tricky to debug as there are many possible causes and solutions. Here’s a compact overview of common issues and how to fix them.
Inspecting Your Nginx Error Logs
The errors and solutions presented in this tutorial are common cases, but not exhaustive. Due to the nature of syntax errors that break the structure of what Nginx recognizes as valid instructions, the following errors are only guidelines for how Nginx reacts. Often, one error can lead to another, and a single issue can be a symptom of a larger or separate problem.
Addressing the “This Site Can’t Be Reached” Error
While browsing online, you’ve probably encountered a webpage that says something like: “This site can’t be reached.” There are potentially many causes for this problem, but this tutorial will focus on common errors from the perspective of a user setting up Nginx. Sometimes refreshing your browser can resolve the issue, but in the case of your own web server, other factors may affect the connection on the backend side.
Here’s an example of the error message you might receive in your web browser:
This site can't be reached error message in web browser
Checking Your Nginx Server Status
The first step you can take is to check if Nginx is active on your system and if there were no installation issues. You can verify this by running the systemd init system to check the status of the Nginx service running on your machine:
systemctl status nginx
Checking and Adjusting Your Firewall Settings
Another step you can take to check your web server’s connection is to verify that your firewall settings are properly configured to accept requests over the appropriate port connection. If not, you’ll need to adjust your firewall settings to allow connections to the port.
sudo ufw status
Checking Your Nginx Configuration File
Before testing your web browser, it is recommended to check your configuration settings to ensure your server domain block is set to listen on port 80. Setting the appropriate port and IP address in your Nginx configuration is essential and must be paired with the corresponding open port in your firewall.
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com
After checking and adjusting the configuration file if necessary, you can verify the syntax errors and restart Nginx:
sudo nginx -t sudo systemctl restart nginx
Conclusion
In this tutorial, you learned how to check if your Nginx service is active, and how to check firewall and port connections that may cause the common “This site can’t be reached” error when using an Nginx web server. If you want to learn more about Nginx, you can visit our highlighted community page or start learning how to install Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04.
