Up until (at least) nginx-0.8.37 I was able to rebuild the nginx Ubuntu package without any problems (I have previously posted in this list the procedure to rebuild a Debain/Ubuntu package). Using the nginx-0.8.42.tar.gz sources I am able to build a nginx_0.8.42-0ubuntu1_i386.deb package that, once installed, gives the following error while trying to run nginx: sudo /usr/sbin/nginx -t the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok [emerg]: mkdir() "/usr/local/nginx/uwsgi_temp" failed (2: No such file  or directory) configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed As Debian does not use /usr/local/nginx/, it seems that something named UWSGI is not following the file placing rules as it should.