Cannot access nginx if it is hosted on a cloud VM and not in a container

Question

I have got a Google Cloud VM with Firewall configured to allow tcp:8080 and tcp:80

I've also configured ufw:

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere                  
8080                       ALLOW       Anywhere                       
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
8080 (v6)                  ALLOW       Anywhere (v6) 

And checked that port 8080 is open:

> sudo nmap -sT -O localhost
PORT     STATE SERVICE
80/tcp   open  http
8080/tcp open  http-proxy

Nginx config:

events {
  worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
  server {
    listen 8080;
    location /some_endpoint {
      proxy_pass http://localhost:<port>/<route>;
  }
}

Then I'm running an nginx on host (without container, just on the VM itself) and in this configutarion I cannot access my machine from the internet - "The connection has timed out", no errors in error.log and nothing in access.log

But! If I'm running same version of nginx with the same config file in the docker in the same VM, then everything is OK and nginx can be reached through the internet.

I'm really struggling to understand what am I doing wrong and how to properly run nginx on a VM itself.

Edit: additional info:

Output of sudo netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN:

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8099          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      6149/traefik                
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8080            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      14761/nginx: master 
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:53           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      542/systemd-resolve 
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      797/sshd: /usr/sbin   
    

Output of curl -v <url>:

*   Trying <URL>...
* connect to <URL> port 8080 failed: Timed out
* Failed to connect to <URL> port 8080 after 21045 ms: Timed out
* Closing connection 0
curl: (28) Failed to connect to <URL> port 8080 after 21045 ms: Timed out

Answer 1

Nginx is listening on localhost:8080. Localhost is no accessible from outside the machine.

Change the listen directive to:

listen *:8080;