Restart of nginx service fails because of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failure

Question

Installing 3rd party SSL on DigitalOcean Droplet, Apache running Ubuntu 12.10.

Following the instructions here:

• AlphaSSL on Apache
• Self signed SSL instructions from DigitalOcean

So everything seems to be going all right. I make the edits to all the appropriate files according to the tutorials above, I put in the certificate information I got from AlphaSSL, but when I try to reboot nginx is where I'm hitting a snag.

root@omitted:/etc/nginx/sites-available# sudo service nginx restart
Restarting nginx: nginx: [emerg] SSL_CTX_use_certificate_chain_file("/etc/nginx/cert.pem") failed (SSL: error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or directory error:20074002:BIO routines:FILE_CTRL:system lib error:140DC002:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_use_certificate_chain_file:system lib)
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

Googling this error led me to the following serverfault page, where the fix was to change directory permissions with the following, which I did:

sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl
sudo chown -R root:root /etc/nginx/ssl
sudo chmod -R 600 /etc/nginx/ssl

but I'm still getting the error. I think I'm missing something. Help.

Edit I just realised the cert.pem file does not exist, but I can't seem to figure out why.

Here is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf : (superlong but I didn't know what to leave out...)

user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

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;

    ##
    # Logging Settings
    ##

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    ##
    # Gzip Settings
    ##

    gzip on;
    gzip_disable "msie6";

    # 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/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

    ##
    # nginx-naxsi config
    ##
    # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-naxsi
    ##

    #include /etc/nginx/naxsi_core.rules;

    ##
    # nginx-passenger config
    ##
    # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-passenger
    ##

    #passenger_root /usr;
    #passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby;

    ##
    # Virtual Host Configs
    ##

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
#mail {
#       # See sample authentication script at:
#       # http://wiki.nginx.org/ImapAuthenticateWithApachePhpScript
#
#       # auth_http localhost/auth.php;
#       # pop3_capabilities "TOP" "USER";
#       # imap_capabilities "IMAP4rev1" "UIDPLUS";
#
#       server {
#               listen     localhost:110;
#               protocol   pop3;
#               proxy      on;
#       }
#
#       server {
#               listen     localhost:143;
#               protocol   imap;
#               proxy      on;
#       }
#}

Solution

According to your error, it seems like nginx can't find /etc/nginx/cert.pem file, I'd suggest you to double check path and permissions (switch to nginx's user and try reading this file).

Comments

[Fabrizio Mazzoni]

Are you sure /etc/nginx/cert.pem is there?

[gersande]

Crickey - you're right it's not there. I'm not sure how to create it either.

[Fabrizio Mazzoni]

Try and post your nginx.conf so we can see

[Admin]

Remove the last comment to have the closing }.