Description
Ensuring you have a proper NGINX configuration is important in determining web servers errors. Both Apache and NGINX are designed to bypass minor errors in the configuration files if it doesn’t lead to a fatal error. That’s basically the different between a reload and a restart command. Generally speaking we always recommend doing a reload as this will reload the configurations that are valid. You might find yourself in a situation where reload works but some sites don’t load due to a configuration error.
How to ensure your NGINX configuration is valid
Run the following command to test your NGINX configuration without disrupting the service at all:
nginx -t
-t tests the configuration file and will show in which file and on which line number there might be a problem.
You can also run the same command but with a capital ‘T’:
nginx -T
-T is the same as -t but also dumps configuration files to standard output
Reference
man nginx