Nginx is refusing to connect on AWS EC2

Question

I'm trying to use nginx to setup a simple node.js server, I'm running the server in background on port 4000, my nginx config file is

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name 52.53.196.173;
  location / {
    include /etc/nginx/proxy_params;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4000;
  }
}

I saved it in /etc/nginx/sites-available and also symlinked it to sites-enabled, the nginx.conf file has the include line already to load files from sites-enabled, then i restarted the service using sudo service nginx restart I tried going to 52.53.196.173 and it refuses to connect, however going to 52.53.196.173:4000 with port 4000 it is working, but I'm trying to make it listen on port 80 with nginx, i tried putting my .ml domain as server_name and no luck, and i have the IP 52.53.196.173 as the A record in the domain dns settings, and I'm doing this on an AWS EC2 Instance Ubuntu Server 16.04, i even tried the full ec2 public dns url no luck, any ideas?

Edit: I solved it by moving the file directly in sites-enabled instead of a symlink

Shyamin Ayesh Shyamin Ayesh · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-27T15:47:49

There is few possible things. First of all you need to verify that nginx server is running & listening on port 80. you can check the listening ports using the following command.

netstat -tunlp

Then you need to check your server firewall & also the selinux policies. ( OR disable selinux for test )

Then you need to verify that AWS security group configured to access the http/https connections on port 80.

PS : Outputs from the following command & configurations will be helpful for troubleshooting.

netstat -tunlp
sestatus
iptables -L

* AWS Security Group Rules
* Nginx configurations ( including main configuration if changed )

P.S : OP fixed the problem by moving the config file directly into site-enabled directory. maybe, reefer the comments for more info if you are having the same issue.

Nginx is refusing to connect on AWS EC2

3 Answers