In this tutorial, we will show you how to completely remove Nginx on CentOS systems. For those of you who didn’t know, Nginx is a powerful and widely-used web server known for its high performance, stability, and low resource consumption. However, there may be situations where you need to completely remove Nginx from your CentOS system, such as when migrating to a different web server or troubleshooting issues.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of completely removing Nginx on a CentOS server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS or RHEL-based.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to remove packages and dependencies for Nginx.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Completely Removing Nginx on CentOS

Step 1. Checking for Nginx.

The first step in removing Nginx is to stop the running service. This ensures that no new connections are accepted and allows for a clean shutdown. To stop the Nginx service, run the following command:

sudo systemctl status nginx

After executing the command, verify that the service has stopped by checking its status:

sudo systemctl status nginx

Step 2. Completely Removing Nginx Packages.

Now that the Nginx service is stopped and disabled, you can proceed with removing the Nginx package from your CentOS system. To do this, use the yum package manager with the following command:

sudo yum remove nginx

To verify that the Nginx package has been successfully removed, run:

yum list installed | grep nginx

Step 3. Removing Nginx Configuration Files.

Now we delete all Nginx files including engine (binary files), configuration files, and also jpg files:

[root@idroot.us ~]# sudo rm -rf /etc/nginx
[root@idroot.us ~]# sudo rm -rf /var/log/nginx
[root@idroot.us ~]# sudo rm -rf /var/cache/nginx/
[root@idroot.us ~]# sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service

Finally, you will need to remove the Nginx user and group from your CentOS system. To do this, run the following command:

sudo userdel nginx
sudo groupdel nginx

Even after removing the Nginx package, configuration files, logs, user, and group, there might still be some residual files and directories scattered across your system. To locate and remove these files, use the whereis command:

whereis nginx

Congratulations! You have successfully removed Nginx. Thanks for using this tutorial for Nginx completely removed, including its packages, configuration files, user, and group on the CentOS system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Nginx website.