nginx: [emerg] "server" directive is not allowed here

samix73 picture samix73 · Jan 20, 2017 · Viewed 135.2k times · Source

I have reconfigured nginx but i can't get it to restart using the following config:

conf:

server {
listen 80;
server_name www.example.com;
return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}


server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;

access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;

location /robots.txt {
    alias /path/to/robots.txt;
    access_log off;
    log_not_found off;
}

location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

location / {
    proxy_pass_header Server;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_connect_timeout 30;
    proxy_read_timeout 30;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
}

location /static {
    expires 1M;
    alias  /path/to/staticfiles;
}
}

after running sudo nginx -c conf -t to test the configuration the following error is returned i can't figure out what is really the problem

nginx: [emerg] "server" directive is not allowed here in    /etc/nginx/sites-available/config:1
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/sites-available/config test failed

Answer

Richard Smith picture Richard Smith · Jan 20, 2017

That is not an nginx configuration file. It is part of an nginx configuration file.

The nginx configuration file (usually called nginx.conf) will look like:

events {
    ...
}
http {
    ...
    server {
        ...
    }
}

The server block is enclosed within an http block.

Often the configuration is distributed across multiple files, by using the include directives to pull in additional fragments (for example from the sites-enabled directory).

Use sudo nginx -t to test the complete configuration file, which starts at nginx.conf and pulls in additional fragments using the include directive. See this document for more.