Nginx will not start (Address already in use)

Question

I have a problem with nginx. I tried different solutions, but for me nothing work. That is my error:

4 root@BANANAS ~ # sudo service nginx restart                                :(
Restarting nginx: nginx: [emerg] bind() to [::]:443 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to [::]:443 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to [::]:443 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to [::]:443 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to [::]:443 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] still could not bind()
nginx.

Can you help me?

Try some of the answers posted here [nginx - nginx: \[emerg\] bind() to \[::\]:80 failed (98: Address already in use)](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14972792/nginx-nginx-emerg-bind-to-80-failed-98-address-already-in-use) — Philip Kirkbride, Feb 17 '17 at 16:58
It looks like https is already in use. Use 'netstat -tulpn' to find out what is using it. — Donal, Feb 17 '17 at 16:58
in 'netstat -tulpn' nothing hears on port 443. And i tried all of this methodes in the comment. — Herbert89, Feb 17 '17 at 17:01
Look for the running buggy software. For me it turned out to be aria2 client. — Deadooshka, Feb 17 '17 at 18:11

Farhad Farahi · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-17T17:42:14.777

155

Probably other process is using specified port:

sudo netstat -tulpn

Get the PID of the process that already using 443. And send signal with kill command.

sudo kill -2 <PID>

sudo service nginx restart

Aternatively you can do:

sudo fuser -k 443/tcp

Make sure you dont use old syntax:

server {
    listen :80;
    listen [::]:80;
}

The above syntax will cause

nginx: [emerg] bind() to [::]:80 failed (98: Address already in use)

Correct syntax:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80 ipv6only=on;
}

or

server {
    listen [::]:80;
}

Both above syntax will achieve the same thing, listening on both ipv4 and ipv6.

edited Feb 17 '17 at 17:42

answered Feb 17 '17 at 17:14

Farhad Farahi

35,528
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I don't find one programm, that uses Port 443. That's my problem. – Herbert89 Feb 17 '17 at 17:16
whats the output of `sudo netstat -tulpn`? – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:17
Use sudo and try again please – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:21
2

Thats weird, do a `sudo pkill nginx` and then retry, Only nginx is installed as a web server right? – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:25
Yes only Nginx is installed as webserver. After the 'sudo pkill nginx' it not worked. – Herbert89 Feb 17 '17 at 17:28
Probably in `/etc/nginx/conf.d/` or `/etc/nginx/sites-available`, also try `sudo fuser -k 443/tcp` – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:40
It does not work at all. I edit the config in the correct syntax, you told me. I also tried the second method. – Herbert89 Feb 17 '17 at 17:44
Did you `sudo fuser -k 443/tcp` and `sudo service nginx restart`? – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:44
`sudo grep -rnwi "listen" /etc/nginx` make sure you corrected all the listen directives. – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:47
To what i should change it? – Herbert89 Feb 17 '17 at 17:49
To the correct syntax specified in the answer, just change the port to 443 and add ssl directive – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:50
What is the ssl directive? – Herbert89 Feb 17 '17 at 17:53
`server { listen [::]:443 ssl; }` – Farhad Farahi Feb 17 '17 at 17:54
https://serverfault.com/a/842515/111100 This says dont use ipv6only option. – AlxVallejo Jan 13 '19 at 04:40
@AlxVallejo The doc says its turned on by default, and the answer author says dont use it because you cant use it multiple times. Of course you cant use it multiple times on the same port... but on different ports you can. – Farhad Farahi Jan 14 '19 at 10:06
Could you please point me in the direction of more info about the old vs new port listen syntax? I think this might be part of the issue for me. – RSmithlal Nov 02 '19 at 12:04
@RSmithlal use the last code block in the answer, if the issue is still there after, you should look elsewhere – Farhad Farahi Nov 02 '19 at 13:08
@FarhadFarahi Is this up-to-date? Does this include lines like `listen [::]:80 default_server;`? – Wolfpack'08 Feb 23 '20 at 06:23
Yes you can have default_server with it, you can check nginx_http_core_module docs and look for listen directive, it has all the available options that can go with this. – Farhad Farahi Feb 23 '20 at 08:40
I cannot upvote this one enough. I was having the port listening problem, but nothing was taking 443. This absolutely fixed it, and the tons of times I wasted. – David Duffy Dec 22 '20 at 20:53
2

This helped me a lot. Make sure you don't have apache2 running =) if you do just remove it using the sudo apt remove apache2 command =_ – Amir Ali Dec 26 '20 at 14:25
Thanks a lot . this helped me a lot. My port 80 was using by apache2. I killed that process – Ariful Islam Mar 31 '22 at 19:27

Aditya Kresna Permana · Answer 2 · 2019-02-16T18:25:47.837

18

Another way (from my experience) is just force quit the process that running on that port 443

sudo fuser -k 443/tcp

or if you running on port 80 just change the port to

sudo fuser -k 80/tcp

Hope it helps someone who had the same issue

Alternative using lsof:

Find the PID & kill the process which running on port 443

sudo kill -9 $(lsof -t -i :443)

edited Feb 16 '19 at 18:25

answered Feb 01 '18 at 09:37

Aditya Kresna Permana

11,869
8
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`fuser` is not installed in centos by default. – Khom Nazid Oct 27 '18 at 03:08
@KhomNazid then do install it first – Aditya Kresna Permana Feb 16 '19 at 18:22

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 04 '18 at 21:44

7

Thank you for the answer. After running

sudo netstat -tulpn

I realised that I had apache2 running on port 80. This was probably done after I used Certbot to install SSL on the server. I removed Apache2 and the server was up and running.

apt remove apache2

This did the trick! Thank you again.

answered Dec 04 '18 at 21:44

ranaonline

71
1
1

1

Worked for me. The vagrant box I was using had `apache2` installed by default and I didn't notice. – BugHunterUK Nov 30 '19 at 01:22

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 18 '21 at 20:14

First, we have to check how many services run on port 80. To check that, you could run the following command:

sudo netstat -plant | grep 80

This would show you which service exactly is listening on port 80 and then you can make a decision whether you want to have that service as is or have Nginx instead.

If it is Apache, you will need to decide whether you want to use Apache or Nginx.

If you only want to have Nginx, you need to stop Apache first:

sudo systemctl stop apache2 && sudo systemctl start nginx

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 25 '20 at 17:28

5

I received the above error due to accidentally repeating the listen directive twice within the same server block as follows:

server {    
   listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=off; 
   listen 443 ssl; 
   ...
}

changing it to:

server {    
   listen 443 ssl; 
   ...
}

or

server {    
   listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=off; 
   ...
}

resolved the problem when restarting the server: sudo service nginx start

answered Mar 25 '20 at 17:28

gustavengstrom

161
3
5

According to https://stackoverflow.com/a/42303738/516864, shouldn't this only happen when using `listen :443 ssl` and not when using `listen 443 ssl`? – andreas May 26 '22 at 12:45

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 04 '20 at 05:04

3

When I killed the nginx process bind to 80 & 443 ports, the process always reappeared with new PID.

It helped me to temporarily comment this line in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, restart nginx and then uncomment the line back:

worker_processes auto;

answered Jan 04 '20 at 05:04

CraZ

1,669
15
24

after doing this had to kill -9 pid and I could start – Thomas Bennett Feb 05 '20 at 17:15

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 02 '21 at 03:28

In my case, running Ubuntu 20.04, I bounced the server, and Apache2 was set to automatically start.

$ sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN

This showed Apache2 running on port 80, and was causing a conflict. I shut it down with

$ sudo systemctl stop Apache2

And then started nginx with

$ sudo systemctl start nginx

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 13 '20 at 12:39

If using a virtual machine, you may just need to restart the virtual machine. I was having the same issues yesterday and I could not get Nginx to start using any of the methods in this post. So I started the virtual machine up this morning, checked the running processes, and I see Nginx running on port 80. I even viewed the status of Nginx yesterday with systemctl and it said failed, but today it is active. Not sure what happened here, but it could be worth a try.

Nginx will not start (Address already in use)

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