NGINX won’t restart — need guidance on correct IP/DNS setup (Apache-free Hestia)

…telecommuting from the twilight zone. it’s not that far. i’m in the same room as the devices.

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            .-/+oossssoo+/-.                                       
                                                                   

Hey all,

I’m running an Apache-free Hestia setup — just Nginx and PHP-FPM — and after reconfiguring my home network (Ethernet/Wi-Fi/LAN changes), I’ve run into a few issues.

Main problem:
NGINX refuses to restart, even after I’ve disabled or suspended all sites.

I’m fairly comfortable with traditional /etc/nginx/ setups but still learning how Hestia structures things. Could someone point me to the preferred configuration and log locations for Nginx within Hestia? I want to see what’s actually failing before I go breaking more things.


Possible cause

After the network changes, I noticed my sites under Hestia.HOST became unreachable. I suspect I confused Hestia’s DNS or IP mapping.

Here’s what I did:

  • In the DNS tab, I set the IP to match the one shown in the Web tab for the site.

  • It “kind of” works either way, but I’m not sure if that’s correct practice.

So:

  • Should Hestia’s site configs use 127.0.0.1, a private LAN IP (e.g. 192.168.x.x), or my public IP?

  • And if I manually edit DNS records to match Web settings, is that actually required — or could it break Nginx restarts?


Context

I’ve been switching between wired and wireless connections — currently the Ethernet port’s tied up by the TV — and I’m using T-Mobile 5G Home Internet (which can be… temperamental).

Also, full disclosure: I’m recovering from a brain injury, so if I phrase things oddly, I appreciate your patience. The goal’s just to get my setup stable again.

Any insight, examples, or references to proper Hestia docs would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Jeff (@ajaxStardust)

per guidance of ChatGPT, i learned that it was indeed my tampering with the Wi-Fi / Wired connections, and subsequent tinkering in hestia… blah, blah…

the solution. my solution, at least:

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/192.168.1.100.conf

replace 192.168.1.100 with 0.0.0.0

this was the “fix-all”
some sites returned to “normal”, but some are still pointing to an invalid IP, which I now understand how and where to properly configure.

thank you!