nginx: [emerg] unknown directive " " in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com:3

Question

I have followed this website http://raspberrypihelp.net/tutorials/24-raspberry-pi-webserver to setup the HTTP server nginx on my Raspberry Pi and try to setup a site call example.com. But when I run sudo service nginx restart, it said

Restarting nginx: nginx: [emerg] unknown directive " " in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com:3

Here is the code in example.com.

    server {

    server_name example.com 192.168.1.88;

    access_log /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log;

    error_log /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log;

    root /srv/www/example.com/public/;

    location / {

        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

    }

    location ~ \.php$ {

        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;

        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;

        fastcgi_index index.php;

        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /srv/www/example.com/public$fastcgi_script_name;

    }

    location /phpmyadmin {

        root /usr/share/;

        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ {

            try_files $uri =404;

            root /usr/share/;

            fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;

            fastcgi_index index.php;

            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

            include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;

        }

        location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ {

            root /usr/share/;

        }

    }

    location /phpMyAdmin {

        rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last;

    }

}

I am just following the steps but it can't run successfully.

Answer 1

I had the same problem which was that I copy/pasted the config code from the web and some dirty EOL(end of line) characters where there.

The editor didn't show them, but nginx treated them like a directive.

Just deleted every EOL and added again.

Answer 2

It sounds like you did some copy and paste work here. It's not uncommon to snag some extra characters that are invisible at the end of line (EOL). Try this:

Run your text through this tool: http://www.textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php

then fix any breaks that may have been removed and will be affected by the comments.

This worked for me. Hope it works for you.

Answer 3

It looks like the nginx binary was compiled with --without-http_fastcgi_module option.This is not default. Try donwloading or compiling a different binary.

Try running

nginx -V

(with uppercase V) to see what options were used to compile the nginx.

Answer 4

I edited some text in the mid of the conf file and nginx started showing this error at the starting of the file itself. I copied the contents of the file, created a new file, pasted the contents there and nginx stopped showing this error.

Answer 5

I faced similar issue with error message as "unknown directive 'index.html'" when running 'sudo nginx -t'. After correcting the HTML syntax errors in index.html, the issue was resolved.

Answer 6

Even if you miss a semicolon you will encounter the same error.

// Missed semicolon
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock

// With semicolon
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;

Answer 7

In my case, I have store configuration file nginx.conf in the github. I have done wget to raw version of code, thus resulted this error.

Later, I have cloned my repository and used the nginx.conf file from clone and issue got resolved.