Nginx service enabled in Plesk is unable to start: Not starting nginx as it is disabled in Plesk.

Symptoms

• Plesk Obsidian running on a Linux-based operating system
• Nginx web server is down and is unable to start:

# systemctl start nginx
Job for nginx.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

• The execution of the journalctl -xe command shows the following message:

Not starting nginx as it is disabled in Plesk. Run 'plesk sbin nginxmng -e' to enable nginx in Plesk.

• Nginx is shown as already enabled when executing the following command:

# plesk sbin nginxmng -s
Enabled

• The Nginx syntax test command shows that there are no Nginx syntax errors:

# nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Cause

A misconfiguration in some Nginx configuration files is preventing it from starting. In it unclear how exactly the misconfiguration has occurred, however the configuration needs to be reset by disabling and enabling the connection between Plesk and Nginx in order to resolve the issue.

Resolution

1. Log in to the server via SSH.

2. Disable and enable nginx reverse proxy server running the following commands one after another:

# plesk sbin nginxmng --disable

# plesk sbin nginxmng --enable

Additional information

Cannot start nginx service on Plesk server: Failed to start Startup script for nginx service

Unable to start nginx: Not starting nginx as it is disabled in config

nginx on Plesk for Linux server does not start automatically after reboot: 99: Cannot assign requested address

Apache with nginx | How Plesk with nginx Processes HTTP Requests | Plesk Obsidian documentation