Nginx: can reach a site via IP address but it doesn’t work with the domain name

Question

I’ve started a nginx webserver recently with Ubuntu Server 22.04 as usual. The hypervisor is VMware Workstation 16.2.4. When I open the site http://192.168.0.213 I can see the default nginx page. But if I try to use my domain name example.com page won’t be found… I make attempts on my host and on other virtual machines using curl. The result is the same. And I’m not able to open my site even from webserver! The command nginx -t output is successful.

obfuscateduser@dnsserver:~$ curl http://example.com
curl: (7) Failed to connect to example.com port 80 after 0 ms: Connection refused
obfuscateduser@webserver:~$ curl http://example.com
curl: (7) Failed to connect to example.com port 80 after 1 ms: Connection refused

/etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
    root /var/www/example.com/html;
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    server_name example.com www.example.com;

    location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

}

/var/www/example.com/html/index.html

<html>
    <head>
        <title>Welcome to EXAMPLE.COM!</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Success!  The your_domain server block is working!</h1>
    </body>
</html>

Permissions

obfuscateduser@webserver:~$ ll /var/www/example.com/html/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 obfuscateduser obfuscateduser 4096 Jan 12 12:00 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 11 17:19 ../
-rw-rw-r-- 1 obfuscateduser obfuscateduser  172 Jan 12 11:39 index.html

Firewall output

Status: active
To                      Action      From

Nginx HTTP              ALLOW       Anywhere

OpenSSH                 ALLOW       Anywhere

Nginx HTTP (v6)         ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

OpenSSH (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

Should I shut down the firewall? Or should I add a special entry in DNS zones files? Might I add some other records to the example.com file?

Is the DNS record for example.com actually pointing to the correct IP-address 192.168.0.213 ? — diya, Jan 12 '23 at 10:07
No, there's only an entry webserver IN A 192.168.0.213 in the forward zone file. And 213 IN PTR webserver.example.com. for the reverse zone. — Ilya Shmadchenko, Jan 12 '23 at 11:03
Consider running curl with increased verbosity i.e. curl -v curl http://example.com and for additional understanding and debugging https://serverfault.com/q/725262/984089 and https://serverfault.com/a/1109720/984089 — diya, Jan 12 '23 at 12:35
@IlyaShmadchenko So you don't have a A record from example.com pointing to your webserver? If so, that's obviously why it doesn't work. — vidarlo, Jan 12 '23 at 12:50
@diya, @vidarlo, I've added example.com. IN A 192.168.0.213 to the forward zone. Now curl is working fine, I can see my site. Thank you! Should I add the same record to the reverse zone? Anyway, I'm going to check the webserver's status tomorrow. — Ilya Shmadchenko, Jan 12 '23 at 14:20

Nginx: can reach a site via IP address but it doesn’t work with the domain name

0 Answers0