NGINX redirecting to default server page - nginx

Question

I'm trying to deploy an app to an Ubuntu 20.04 server with NGINX. My static build files are under /var/www/html directory. The issue I'm getting is that, when accessing the website through the domain name, the default server page (blank, with one line of text detailing server info) shows instead of my static files.
I tried changing the server_name and root values in the config file under "sites-available" directory. No matter whether I use the domain name or the IP address, I still get the same result.
This is the config file under sites-available:
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name example.com;
root /var/www/html;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}
}
And this is the default nginx.conf file:
user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf;
events {
worker_connections 768;
# multi_accept on;
}
http {
##
# Basic Settings
##
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
# server_tokens off;
# server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
# server_name_in_redirect off;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
##
# SSL Settings
##
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
##
# Logging Settings
##
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
##
# Gzip Settings
##
gzip on;
# gzip_vary on;
# gzip_proxied any;
# gzip_comp_level 6;
# gzip_buffers 16 8k;
# gzip_http_version 1.1;
# gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
##
# Virtual Host Configs
##
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Answer 1

your question is off-topic here and should be asked on serverfault.
There are a number of things missing from your description which I would expect to see. While this does not point to a definitive cause for your issue, they may be contributory factors:
Regarding....
This is the config file under sites-available:
On Ubuntu, Nginx ignores this directory - it looks in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled for the specific sites to run. The files themselves should reside in /etc/nginx/sites-available and be symlinked from /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
If you want multiple sites on your server then you should have at least 2 files visible in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled, a default one like this....
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name _;
root /var/www/html;
...
(Note the "default_server" and "server_name _") and one for each named server.
IME, Nginx needs to load the default config first. And it loads the files in alphabetical order. So a symlink named "a.example.com" will be loaded before "default". On my servers, the default config is named "_default"