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After I removed the version 0.7.x which was delivered by the Debian standard packages, I installed the version 1.4.1 of nginx by source.

It is possible to start nginx with service nginx start and I see that nginx is reserving the port 80 when I do netstat.

netstat -apn | grep nginx output: 

tcp      0    0 0.0.0.0:80            0.0.0.0:*             LISTEN    3115/nginx

The problem is, when I do service nginx status or service nginx stop I get this message:

could not access PID file for nginx ... failed!

Who can I fix this? And how do I prevent getting this problem?

EDIT: solution

  1. remove nginx
  2. then go to the source and ./configure --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid
  3. make
  4. checkinstall make install
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    Your solution is working for me.you can post your solution as answer. Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 10:43

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Debian probably configured/patched nginx for their package to put the pid file someplace specific that it doesn't do by default. When you replaced it via something compiled from source, it doesn't match the expectations of the service infrastructure.

I'd look at what patches and configuration options were done by the debian folks and recompile your 1.4.x version with the options to put the pid file in the same place.

As to how to prevent this type of problem? Either do things via packages or compile from source but not both. Or be aware you will need to take extra care when doing so since things will break.

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  • i know what you mean, but i dont know who to do it, could you give me a brief explanation? Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 18:52
  • When Debian (or Red Hat, Ubuntu, Slackware, etc.) packages up something, they change things to make it fit. By default most software will install in /usr/local, to keep from co-mingling with the vendor-supplied operating system files. Debian wants things to install in the base system places. So they configure it to do so. Nginx might put its pid file in a place like /usr/local/var/run/nginx.pid, or somewhere in /var that is different from where Debian wants all pid files. So Debian changes nginx's configuration to do that. When you compile from source, you don't do that, and it breaks. Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 18:59
  • nice! recompiled with --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid and now it works! Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 19:07
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    @derty Also, keep in mind that if Debian does a security update of nginx, it will overwrite your source install. You should look into putting a hold on that package so your nginx install doesn't suddenly revert to an older version at some point. Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 19:12

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