Comment 7 for bug 1476296

I was just bitten by this myself. For what it's worth, in Ansible, I got around it with doing this immediately after the nginx package install (this essentially Lior's solution, converted into Ansible tasks):

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# We need to remove the Upstart config, which is conflicting with the also-included systemV init.d config
# Re: https://bugs.launchpad.net/nginx/+bug/1476296

- name: Stop nginx (as managed by upstart)
  command: initctl stop nginx

- name: Remove the upstart init command
  file: state=absent path=/etc/init/nginx.conf

- name: ensure that Nginx will start on restarts with systemV
  command: update-rc.d nginx defaults

- name: ensure that nginx is started
  service: name=nginx state=started