Web-server configuration fails: Refusing to create symlink

Symptoms

• When rebuilding web-server configuration, the operation fails with the “Refusing to create symlink” error messages:

  ERR [panel] Apache config (15701060840.16755700) generation failed: Template_Exception: Refusing to create symlink '/var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/last_nginx.conf': file with the same name already exists

Cause

Plesk fails to create symlinks for last_httpd.conf / last_ip_default.conf / last_nginx.conf in configuration directories of virtual hosts because these files already exist as regular files (not symlinks).

Resolution

1. Connect to the Plesk server via SSH.

2. Remove all last_httpd.conf that are not symlinks:

   # find /var/www/vhosts/system/ -name last_httpd.conf -type f -exec rm {} ;

3. Remove all last_nginx.conf that are not symlinks:

   # find /var/www/vhosts/system/ -name last_nginx.conf -type f -exec rm {} ;

4. Remove all last_ip_default.conf that are not symlinks:

   # find /var/www/vhosts/system/ -name last_ip_default.conf -type f -exec rm {} ;

5. Re-generate web-server configuration:

   # plesk repair web -y