nginx error: (99: Cannot assign requested address)

Question

I am running Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 and nginx 0.7.65, and when I try starting my nginx server:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

I get the following error:

Starting nginx: [emerg]: bind() to IP failed (99: Cannot assign requested address)

where "IP" is a placeholder for my IP address. Does anybody know why that error might be happening? This is running on EC2.

My nginx.conf file looks like this:

user www-data www-data;
worker_processes  4;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    access_log /usr/local/nginx/logs/access.log;

    sendfile        on;
    tcp_nopush      on;
    tcp_nodelay         on;

    keepalive_timeout  3;

    gzip  on;
    gzip_comp_level 2;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types  text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml
    application/xml+rss text/javascript;

    include /usr/local/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

}

and my /usr/local/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com looks like:

server {

        listen   IP:80;
        server_name  example.com;
        rewrite ^/(.*) https://example.com/$1 permanent;

       }

server {

        listen   IP:443 default ssl;

        ssl         on;
        ssl_certificate     /etc/ssl/certs/myssl.crt;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/myssl.key;

        ssl_protocols       SSLv3 TLSv1;
        ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-LOW:-SSLv2:-EXP;

        server_name example.com;

        access_log /home/example/example.com/log/access.log;
        error_log /home/example/example.com/log/error.log;

        }

Answer 1

There might be remaining process/program that's using/listening at port 80.

You can check that using netstat -lp. Kill that process and start nginx.

Answer 2

To avoid hard-coding the IP address in the config, do this:

listen 0.0.0.0:80