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How to Uninstall Nginx on Ubuntu

Published May 28, 2023 in Cloud nginx Tutorials Ubuntu

If you’ve been using the nginx web server and decide to switch to Apache, OpenLiteSpeed, or Lighttpd, you may encounter an “Address already in use” error. This indicates that ports 80 and 443 are currently occupied by nginx. To enable the new web server to use these ports, nginx needs to be removed. This guide will show you how to delete nginx from Ubuntu.

Note: Before proceeding with the uninstallation, make sure to back up any data or configurations you don’t want to lose.

To remove nginx from Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. Connect to your server where nginx is installed. 

2. Stop the web server by entering the following command:

sudo systemctl stop nginx

3. Uninstall the nginx package with the “purge” command. This command is preferable as it not only removes the package but also deletes its configuration files, unlike the “remove” command.

sudo apt-get purge nginx

After executing the above commands, the system will prompt you to remove any dependencies.

Remove Nginx package

4. Remove any dependencies that were installed alongside nginx but are no longer required:

sudo apt-get autoremove

The terminal will display a list of all the removed dependencies.

Remove Nginx dependencies

5. (Optional) You may want to check if there are any remaining nginx-related files in the system. Common directories include “/etc/nginx/” and “/var/log/nginx/”. If these directories still exist, you can remove them manually:

sudo rm -rf /etc/nginx /var/log/nginx

6. (Optional) To verify if the web server has been completely removed, check the status of the nginx service:

sudo systemctl status nginx

If the web server has been successfully removed, you’ll see the service status set to “inactive (dead)”:

Check the nginxs removal with the systemctl command

That’s it! These steps help you to uninstall nginx on your server. 

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