Forum Discussion
Nimbostratusgetting compiling error when enabling Nginx App_potect
CumulonimbusHi yasserMalah
App Protect wasn’t installed properly.
Check if it’s installed: rpm -qa | grep app-protect
If it’s not installed, reinstall.
Follow the troubleshooting steps below.
NGINX App Protect WAF Troubleshooting Guide
NimbostratusHi
thanks for your reply but i am sure it is installed here is the output query for the isntalled packages
apt list --installed | grep -E 'nginx-plus|app-protect'
WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.
app-protect-attack-signatures/stable,now 2025.07.10-1~focal amd64 [installed]
app-protect-bot-signatures/stable,now 2025.07.09-1~focal amd64 [installed,automatic]
app-protect-common/now 11.336.0-1~focal amd64 [installed,local]
app-protect-compiler/now 11.336.0-1~focal amd64 [installed,local]
app-protect-geoip/stable,now 2023.10.30-1~focal amd64 [installed,auto-removable]
app-protect-graphql/now 0.7.0-1~focal amd64 [installed,local]
app-protect-module-plus/stable,now 34+5.342.0-1~focal amd64 [installed]
app-protect-plugin/stable,now 6.12.0-1~focal amd64 [installed]
app-protect-threat-campaigns/stable,now 2025.07.13-1~focal amd64 [installed,automatic]
nginx-plus-module-appprotect/stable,now 34+5.342.0-1~focal amd64 [installed,automatic]
nginx-plus/stable,now 34-2~focal amd64 [installed]
brianTamaki
developerNginx team: See this bug for why the users are searching for compiler issues when evaluating NAP.
https://github.com/nginx/documentation/issues/1516 and consider instead providing the new steps to ensure policies are added to the steps shown in the WAF installation guide. The link provided to the original poster doesn't appear to be a "troubleshooting guide" for WAF, but the knowledge base AI results will return this thread as one of only 2 top results for the specific NAP error message during nginx config testing or execution with NAP. 😀
If the file .../compile_error_msg.json isn't present or readable, because of permissions and/or some NAP subprocess had silently failed (compilation? nothing shown even with -vvv)) during config evaluation (e.g. load module .., app_protect on; app_protect policy...) or even NAP installation, then touching that file into existence and changing the owner to nginx:nginx (or the running nginx user:group) successfully bypasses that error.
NGINX config files will still fail to successfully test even if the installation guide is followed and file exists, because nginx is receiving numeric exit status codes, instead of the JSON NAP subprocess wants to see to evaluate and successfully enable it is my best guess. I will also file this bug and reference these posts.
