nginx- duplicate default server error

Question

You likely have other files (such as the default configuration) located in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled that needs to be removed.

This issue is caused by a repeat of the default_server parameter supplied to one or more listen directives in your files. You'll likely find this conflicting directive reads something similar to:

listen 80 default_server;

As the nginx core module documentation for listen states:

The default_server parameter, if present, will cause the server to become the default server for the specified address:port pair. If none of the directives have the default_server parameter then the first server with the address:port pair will be the default server for this pair.

This means that there must be another file or server block defined in your configuration with default_server set for port 80. nginx is encountering that first before your mysite.com file so try removing or adjusting that other configuration.

If you are struggling to find where these directives and parameters are set, try a search like so:

grep -R default_server /etc/nginx

OS Debian 10 + nginx. In my case, i unlinked the "default" page as:

1. cd/etc/nginx/sites-enabled
2. unlink default
3. service nginx restart

Execute this at the terminal to see conflicting configurations listening to the same port:

grep -R default_server /etc/nginx

If you're on Digital Ocean this means you need to go to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ and then REMOVE using rm -R digitalocean and default

It fixed it for me!

Pic of Console on Windows 10 using Bitvise

In my case junk files from editor caused the problem. I had a config as below:

#...
http {
 # ...
 include ../sites/*;
}

In the ../sites directory initially I had a default.config file. However, by mistake I saved duplicate files as default.config.save and default.config.save.1. Removing them resolved the issue.