Hi,
I am trying to install Nginx as simple reverse proxy over Apache so it would serve static files and proxy everything else to Apache. Apache is running on port 8000.
Both Nginx and Apache start up without any errors.

The problem is that no matter what i do i see default Apache page (like this http://mirror.centos.org/mirrorscripts/noindex_new.html) I don't understand why this is happening (Nginx config contains path to folders that do not contain this files)

I keep getting the following errors in error.log:
[error] 16144#0: *286 connect() failed (111: Connection refused) while connecting to upstream, client: x.x.x.x, server: www.mysite.com, request: "GET /dir/test.html HTTP/1.0", upstream: "http://127.0.0.1:8000/dir/test.html", host: "www.mysite.com"

Below is my Nginx config:

[size=small]user nginx nginx;
worker_processes 4;

error_log logs/error.log;
#error_log logs/error.log notice;
#error_log logs/error.log info;

pid logs/nginx.pid;

events {
worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;

log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

#access_log logs/access.log main;

sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;

keepalive_timeout 65;

gzip on;
gzip_min_length 500;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 5;
gzip_types text/plain text/css
application/x-javascript text/xml
application/xml application/xml+rss
text/javascript image/x-icon;

server {
listen 80;
server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com;
access_log logs/host.access.log main;

# serve static files
location ~ ^/(images|javascript|js|css|flash|media|static)/ {
root /var/www/vhosts/mysite.com/httpdocs;
expires 30d;
}

# pass requests for dynamic content to rails/turbogears/zope, et al
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
}
}
}[/size]

Could you please tell what might be the problem ?
Nginx is run as "nginx" user under group "nginx" while while virtualhost root folder belongs to another user from another group. Could this be the problem ?

I have the same problem, did you solve it?

yes, i did
the problem was in apache and nginx configs - in one place i had "localhost" written, in other "127.0.0.1" and that was causing apache to work improperly

so you should carefully check apache and nginx configs once again

Sorry for arriving so late to this post, but right now I am having right the same annoying trouble and I did not quite understand your solution.
I mean, I've greped localhost and 127.0.0.1 all thru my apache.conf and my nginx.conf as well as thru my apache2|nginx/sites-availables/* and do not find any active line with such difference.
What files did you find that difference in ?

Thanks in advance.

Well ....something else I can say is, in my case I do not think that localhost != 127.0.0.1 is the mistake because in my case common request work but 1 among 50 or so they fail.

No one wants me :(

Ok I'll add more info on this topic:
I have found that 111 connection refused it's not my only error between Apache and Nginx.Other errors like Timeouts and others related to buffering troubles reading/writing upstreams also arise. Result of all of them is my website sometimes shows blank pages.
I suspect it is related to Apache not being able to serve contents to Nginx at speed this is requesting. However, I've enabled buffering and tuned parameters related to buffering and cache in my /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite.com ...... anyway such errors keep on arising: randomly (probably due to overload) my website shows blank pages. I haven't yet been able to relate such blank pages with nginx or apache errors .........any light on all this ? pleeeeeaseee (miserably begging)