configuration fail nginx setting for tornadoweb, unknown directive "user"

Question

I've got this error in nginx version 1.0.0

nginx: [emerg] unknown directive "user" in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
tornado:1

if I remove user www-data the worker processes got error

nginx: [emerg] unknown directive "worker_processes" in /etc/nginx/
sites-enabled/tornado:1

I've search on google but still got nothing please help

this is my tornado in site-available

user www-data www-data;
worker_processes 1;

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
    use epoll;

}

http {
    # Enumerate all the Tornado servers here
    upstream frontends {
        server 127.0.0.1:8081;
        server 127.0.0.1:8082;
        server 127.0.0.1:8083;
        server 127.0.0.1:8084;
    }

    include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

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

    keepalive_timeout 65;
    proxy_read_timeout 200;
    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;
    gzip on;
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types text/plain text/html text/css text/xml
               application/x-javascript application/xml
               application/atom+xml text/javascript;

    # Only retry if there was a communication error, not a timeout
    # on the Tornado server (to avoid propagating "queries of death"
    # to all frontends)
    proxy_next_upstream error;

    server {
        listen 8080;

        # Allow file uploads
        client_max_body_size 50M;

        location ^~ /static/ {
            root /var/www;
            if ($query_string) {
                expires max;
            }
        }
        location = /favicon.ico {
            rewrite (.*) /static/favicon.ico;
        }
        location = /robots.txt {
            rewrite (.*) /static/robots.txt;
        }

        location / {
            proxy_pass_header Server;
            proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
            proxy_redirect false;
            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
            proxy_pass http://frontends;
        }
    }

}

Answer 1

Probably a bit overdue, but if anyone stumbles on this here's a hint:

Probably config collision, check in /etc/nginx for a .conf file with same directive.

Answer 2

Also worth checking, is whether the nginx.conf has an "include" line. It's very common and is a source of collisions.

For example.

evan@host:~/$ cat /etc/nginx/nginx.conf | grep include
 include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
 include /etc/nginx/conf.d/.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/;

In this case, a directive in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ will clash with the the contents of nginx.conf. Make sure you don't double up on anything between the included files.

Answer 3

Just want to elaborate on Kjetil M.'s answer, as that worked for me but I did not get what he means immediately. I wasn't until after a lot of attempts did I fix the problem and had a "oh that's what he meant" momment.

If your /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file and one of other config files /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ use the same directive such as "user", you will run into this error. Just make sure only 1 version is active and comment out the other ones.