The nginx web server fails to start on a Plesk server: "nginx: [emerg] bind() to

Started by Suhitha, Sep 29, 2025, 07:05 AM

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Suhitha

Question: The nginx web server fails to start on a Plesk server: "nginx: [emerg] bind() to 203.0.113.2:443 failed (99: Cannot assign requested address)"


Applicable to:

  • Plesk for Linux


Symptoms

  • The Plesk panel data (including the web server configuration files) has been recently migrated to a new Plesk server

  • The nginx web server fails to start and the following error is shown in the Plesk GUI:

New configuration files for the Apache web server were not created due to the errors in configuration templates: nginx: [emerg] bind() to 203.0.113.2:443 failed (99: Cannot assign requested address) nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

  • The IP address 203.0.113.2 has been used during the migration, however it is no longer present on the network interfaces of the Linux server

Cause

The file /etc/nginx/plesk.conf.d/server.conf still contains the outdated 203.0.113.2 IP address, which is mentioned in the error message.


Resolution

Force the recreation of the nginx configuration file by following these steps:

1.Connect to the server via SSH as the root user

2.Disable nginx by executing the following command:

# plesk sbin nginxmng -d

3.Enable nginx once again by executing the following command:

# plesk sbin nginxmng -e

After this has been done, the IP address that was causing the issue should not be present within the /etc/nginx/plesk.conf.d/server.conf file any longer.