Why am I seeing Apache2 Default Page while using nginx

Question

This is my first time setting up virtual server with Ubuntu and I have some questions regarding Apache2.

When I turn the virtual server on, it was started with lightppd. Since (I thought) I'm more familiar with Apache setups in my past with XAMPP interface, I uninstalled that and installed Apache instead. Now having Apache2 for two weeks, my website, that is connected to mentioned VPS, keeps showing Apache successful setup page. I have tried every solutions in Ubuntu stackExchange and other forums, yet the result still stay the same. So starting today, I uninstalled Apache and tried my luck with other server such as NGINX.

But after I uninstalled it, the page still persists as if whatever I do to it do nothing. I restart my VPS, I restart the system, I delete everything related to Apache, and the page still shown in my website. Does anyone knows what should I do with this and where to look for the source of the problem?

Ubuntu version is 22.04.3 LTS,

Apache is working page:

netstat -tulp doesn't show any Apache services:

I've seen this help page Cannot shutdown apache2 on 16.04 LTS but the Apache is working page still persists. Thank you for your help.

The deletion of apache seems like should also includes /var/www directory, but since I also have nginx it looks like we can have both having one /var/www directory

In the /var/www directory, I see two folders: one named html and my own personal website directory, let's say it's myOwnBlog.com. Inside the /var/www/html directory there are two files named test.html and index.nginx-debian.html

html
|-- index.nginx-debian.html
`-- test.html

We can ignore /var/www/myOwnBlog.com since it's empty. Even if I add content here the content won't appear instead of Apache successful message.

sudo service apache2 status shows:

sudo service apache2 status
Unit apache2.service could not be found.

So it can be verified that apache2 is completely uninstalled.

sudo service nginx status shows:

nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: en>
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-11-28 13:25:43 UTC; 1h 15min ago
       Docs: man:nginx(8)
    Process: 419 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process o>
    Process: 519 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=>
   Main PID: 538 (nginx)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 9553)
     Memory: 10.6M
        CPU: 114ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
             ├─538 "nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_pro>
             ├─539 "nginx: worker process" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" >
             └─540 "nginx: worker process" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" >

and it can be verified that nginx is the one that is actually still running.

Edit 1: Adding details requested by sotirov:

There is a sites-available inside /etc/nginx/ directory, and the content is indeed as requested:

tree sites-available
sites-available
`-- default

The content of index.nginx-debian.html is, as expected, a welcome page of nginx with 'Welcome to Nginx!' and so on.

Here's the content, it is what supposed to appear instead of Apache successful page I think:

  GNU nano 6.2               index.nginx-debian.html                         <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
<style>
    body {
        width: 35em;
        margin: 0 auto;
        font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
    }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1>
<p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
working. Further configuration is required.</p>
<p>For online documentation and support please refer to
<a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/>
Commercial support is available at
<a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p>
<p><em>Thank you for using nginx.</em></p>
</body>
</html>

Edit 2: Trying sotirov tips regarding obsolete method of erasing Apache,

I cannot paste the results because the ssh restarted it's session after a while. But it found these packages and recommend me to sudo apt autoremove:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapr1 libaprutil1
  libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 7 to remove and 91 not upgraded.
After this operation, 7,160 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 101786 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing apache2-bin (2.4.52-1ubuntu4.6) ...
Removing apache2-data (2.4.52-1ubuntu4.6) ...
Removing apache2-utils (2.4.52-1ubuntu4.6) ...
Removing libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3:amd64 (1.6.1-5ubuntu4.22.04.2) ...
Removing libaprutil1-ldap:amd64 (1.6.1-5ubuntu4.22.04.2) ...
Removing libaprutil1:amd64 (1.6.1-5ubuntu4.22.04.2) ...
Removing libapr1:amd64 (1.7.0-8ubuntu0.22.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.10.2-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.35-0ubuntu3.4) ...

Run this command to check which program is serving port 80/443: sudo netstat -tulp. You can disable Apache with sudo systemctl disable apache2. Tip: you can have Apache installed and another web server. Just select which ones are disable and which one is enabled and running. — John Hanley, Nov 27 '23 at 08:07
@JohnHanley but I already uninstalled it, how can it still working? — Dean Debrio, Nov 27 '23 at 08:13
What is the output of sudo netstat -tulp? Put those details in your post. — John Hanley, Nov 27 '23 at 08:14
@JohnHanley I've done the netstat -tulp and cannot find apache system running. The details are inserted — Dean Debrio, Nov 27 '23 at 09:18
@user535733 I'm using incognito, the page also appear on other browser. does that count? — Dean Debrio, Nov 27 '23 at 09:21
What is your Ubuntu version? Can you update your question with the result of sudo service apache2 status (please don't use screenshot, copy and paste the text). btw the default directory used for the files shown by Apache is /var/www/html/. — sotirov, Nov 27 '23 at 18:01
@sotirov - now that we know Nginx is running, questions about Apache are irrelevant. — John Hanley, Nov 27 '23 at 18:03
@JohnHanley okay from that list it an be shown that nginx is running instead of apache because I already installed nginx. But then why my routing shows apache successful page? — Dean Debrio, Nov 28 '23 at 14:01
@DeanDebrio This is strange, I expected you to have the old Apache index.html in /var/www/html/. You can check the nginx settings in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default, more specifically, look for the root directive, by default it should be root /var/www/html;. Also, check the content of /var/www/html/index.nginx-debian.html. — sotirov, Nov 28 '23 at 18:23
@sotirov Does the files got removed when I did sudo apt autoremove apache2.* according to this help https://askubuntu.com/questions/176964/permanently-removing-apache2 ? Because I just followed that yesterdays before posting questions in this forum and the apache page still persists in my website. — Dean Debrio, Nov 29 '23 at 05:32
@DeanDebrio The accepted answer on that question is more than 10 years old and about Apache 2.2. sudo apt autoremove apache2.* will not remove the default Apache index.html. It will not even remove the Apache2 installation. It's better to use sudo apt purge apache2, this will also remove the configuration files. — sotirov, Nov 29 '23 at 11:29
@sotirov tried and added the results to the edited question, trying to replicate the problem in virtual machine since previous actions doesn't delete the page. Is this actually related to how hosting works? — Dean Debrio, Nov 29 '23 at 11:51
@DeanDebrio this is how apt works. Check this question: https://askubuntu.com/a/187891/1157209 I don't know why you are still seeing the old Apache Default Page. The file it uses is usually located at: /var/www/html/index.html, but according to what you shared, you don't have such file. I am starting to suspect that you may have some caching enabled somewhere (browser, cloudflare or something similar). How are you accessing this web server from your browser - local IP, public IP, domain name? — sotirov, Nov 29 '23 at 12:22
@sotirov I am using incognito mode, different browser still persists as well. I access this via domain name. And yes, I have cloudflare, is that thing also has its own caching? Could you kindly explain it in answer so I can finally close this question? This might work though because I cannot imagine anything else... — Dean Debrio, Nov 29 '23 at 13:43
@DeanDebrio btw I added an answer on how to uninstall Apache2 on Ubuntu 22.04: https://askubuntu.com/a/1494332/1157209 — sotirov, Nov 29 '23 at 16:19
This question should be closed. This forum is not a chat service. It is your responsibility to post a well researched question that can be answered. Instead you are going back and forth editing the question as you gather more information which should have been completed before you wrote the question. — John Hanley, Nov 29 '23 at 16:36

sotirov · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-29T16:23:17.640

From everything you have said so far, I believe that the domain name you are opening is not really using your web server.

Check what your webserver returns:

To confirm this, open a terminal on your server and execute these commands:

mkdir ~/web_server_test
cd ~/web_server_test
wget localhost
cat index.html

The content of ~/web_server_test/index.html should be the same as the content of /var/www/html/index.nginx-debian.html.

You can remove the folder when finished:

rm -rf abby.ns.cloudflare

How to configure Cloudflare to use your domain:

Get the IP address of your VPS. I don't know which company you use, but writing this in the server's terminal should show you the IP:
```
ip a
```
Make sure your domain name uses the right name servers. Open your Cloudflare account -> select your domain -> DNS. Your domain's name servers should be the same as what you see in Cloudflare Nameservers. Based on your comment, I suppose one of them is abby.ns.cloudflare.com.
Open your Cloudflare account -> select your domain -> DNS. In the DNS management for [your domain] section, change the IP address of A record with the IP address of your server. It should look something like this:

The content is indeed nginx start pages..how should I fix this condition? I remember adding cloudflare server name like abby.ns.cloudflare or something like that to my domain address indeed. Should I just scrap that and insert my web server server name like ns1.hostinger.1? — Dean Debrio, Nov 29 '23 at 15:39
@DeanDebrio I updated my answer. However, this is not really related to Ubuntu and depends on your VPS provider and how you want to configure your domain. — sotirov, Nov 29 '23 at 16:14

Why am I seeing Apache2 Default Page while using nginx

1 Answers1

Check what your webserver returns:

How to configure Cloudflare to use your domain:

Related: