working /etc/nginx/conf.d/linux-dash.conf

# /etc/nginx/conf.d/linux-dash.conf
server {
    server_name     linux-dash.erictest;
    root            /var/www/linux-dash;
    index           index.html index.php;
    access_log      /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log       /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    # Cache static files for as long as possible
    location ~* \.(?:xml|ogg|mp3|mp4|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|ttf|css|js|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico)$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
            expires max;
            access_log off;
            add_header Pragma public;
            add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
    }

    # if hosting in a sub folder, setup a new location
    # replace `/linus-dash` with the folder name eg. `/folder_name`
    #location /linux-dash {
    #    index index.html index.php;
    #}

    # Pass PHP requests on to PHP-FPM using sockets
    location ~ \.php(/|$) {
            fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
            # fastcgi_pass unix:/run/linux-dash.sock;
            # fastcgi_pass linux-dash-sock:9001;
            fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
            # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock
            # fastcgi_pass   localhost:9000; # using TCP/IP stack

            #if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {
            #        return 404;
            #}

            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
            # include fastcgi_params;
            include fastcgi.conf;
    }
}

upstream linux-dash-sock{
   # server unix:/var/run/linux-dash.sock;
    server 127.0.0.1:9000;
}