I had the same issue. What I found is that "SELinux" was blocking nginx from using the socket. If SELinux is enabled you can check the status (which should look similar to below): [root@localhost ~]# sestatus SELinux status: enabled SELinuxfs mount: /selinux Current mode: enforcing Mode from config file: enforcing Policy version: 21 Policy from config file: targeted You can add an NGINX SELinux policy or just disable SELinux to get around the issue. Check the status of SELinux using # sestatus If it says enabled, vi into /etc/sysconfig/selinux . This is a symlink to /etc/selinux/config so modify this file in case you don't find the above file. Terminal command: sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux The file is highly self-explanatory. Just change the value of SELINUX to "disabled" -- without quotes. Most important step - REBOOT! Reference