Nginx: stat() failed (13: permission denied)

I am using the default config while adding the specific directory with nginx installed on my ubuntu 12.04 machine.

server {
        #listen   80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
        #listen   [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6

        index index.html index.htm;

        # Make site accessible from http://localhost/
        server_name localhost;

        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to index.html
                root /username/test/static;
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
                # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
                # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
        }
...

...
}

I just want a simple static nginx server to serve files out of that directory. However, checking the error.log I see

2014/09/10 16:55:16 [crit] 10808#0: *2 stat() "/username/test/static/index.html" failed (13: Permission denied), client:, server: localhost, request: "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1", host: "domain"
2014/09/10 16:55:16 [error] 10808#0: *2 rewrite or internal redirection cycle while internally redirecting to "/index.html

I've already done chown -R www-data:www-data on /username/test/static, I've set them to chmod 755. I don't know what else needs to be set.

Nginx operates within the directory, so if you can't cd to that directory from the nginx user then it will fail (as does the stat command in your log). Make sure the www-user can cd all the way to the /username/test/static. You can confirm that the stat will fail or succeed by running

sudo -u www-data stat /username/test/static

In your case probably the /username directory is the issue here. Usually www-data does not have permissions to cd to other users home directories.

The best solution in that case would be to add www-data to username group:

gpasswd -a www-data username

and make sure that username group can enter all directories along the path:

chmod g+x /username && chmod g+x /username/test && chmod g+x /username/test/static

For your changes to work, restart nginx

nginx -s reload

Nginx need to have +x access on all directories leading to the site's root directory.

Ensure you have +x on all of the directories in the path leading to the site's root. For example, if the site root is /home/username/siteroot:

chmod +x /home/
chmod +x /home/username
chmod +x /home/username/siteroot

I've just had the same problem on a CentOS 7 box.

Seems I'd hit selinux. Putting selinux into permissive mode (setenforce permissive) has worked round the problem for now. I'll try and get back with a proper fix.

On CentOS 7.0 I had this Access Deined problem caused by SELinux and these steps resolved the issue:

yum install -y policycoreutils-devel
grep nginx /var/log/audit/audit.log | audit2allow -M nginx
semodule -i nginx.pp

Update: Just a side-note from what I've learned while using digitalocean's virtual Linux servers, or as they call them Droplets. Using SELinux requires a decent amount of RAM. It's most probably like you won't be able to run and manage SELinux on a droplet with less than 2GB of RAM.

You may have Security-Enhanced Linux running, so add rule for that. I had permission 13 errors, even though permissions were set and user existed..

chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /username/test/static

To check the default Nginx users:

sudo ps aux| grep nginx

You will get an output like this:

root       69558  0.0  0.0  66276  1708 ?        Ss   10:14   0:00 
nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
www-data   69559  0.0  0.1  66516  5540 ?        S    10:14   0:00 nginx: worker process
www-data   69560  0.0  0.1  66516  6944 ?        S    10:14   0:00 nginx: worker process
root       69794  0.0  0.0   8168   672 pts/1    S+   10:19   0:00 grep --color=auto nginx

Also, check the nginx.conf file using any text editor of your choice: I will be using vim:

vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Solution:

1. Change the www-data user in the nginx.conf file to root, in case you are on root user.

2. The Second solution is to add the user www-data to root group.

Symptom:

Could not upload images to WordPress Media Library.

Cause:

(CentOS) yum update

Error:

2014/10/22 18:08:50 [crit] 23286#0: *5332 open() "/var/lib/nginx/tmp/client_body/0000000003" failed (13: Permission denied), client: 1.2.3.4, server: _, request: "POST /wp-admin/media-new.php HTTP/1.1", host: "example.com", referrer: "http://example/wp-admin/media-new.php"

Solution:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/nginx

I finally found my way through. In short, let's say your username is joe and you hold a website under your personal filesystem /home/joe/path/to/website.

You literally have to tell the system that nginx is your pal.
Place nginx in joe group :

sudo gpasswd -a nginx joe

After that if it still doesn't work, check right access of /home/joe directory. That's probably the reason why nginx can't reach the file because even if he is your friend now you have to open him the door to your house :

sudo chmod g+x /home/joe

That's it. That's literally all you have to do to give nginx access to your local files :)

I don't think there are security concerns with this method because nginx is the high authority and only an admin can change the group. nginx can now read what's in joe directories. It's only a security breach if the holder of the nginx account is different with the user you open directory access from, but in my case I'm the holder of both parties, that is in a local context.

I faced this problem, I solved it to give permissions to nginx user and group something like this:

chown -R nginx:nginx /username/test/static

This is how i fixed this

sudo chmod o+x /home/ec2-user

By default the static data, when you install the nginx, will be in /var/www/html. So you can just copy your static folder into /var/html/ and set the

root /var/www/<your static folder>

in ngix.conf (or /etc/nginx/sites-available/default)

This worked for me on ubuntu but I guess it should not be much different for other distros.

Hope it helps.

In my case, the folder which served the files was a symbolic link to another folder, made with

ln -sf /origin /var/www/destination

Even though the permissions (user and group) where correct on the destination folder (the symbolic link), I still had the error because Nginx needed to have permissions to the origin folder whole's hierarchy as well.

Change your nginx.conf user property to www-static files owener.

#   * Official English Documentation: http://nginx.org/en/docs/
#   * Official Russian Documentation: http://nginx.org/ru/docs/

user your_user_name;

# same other config

I had the same issue, I am using Plesk Onyx 17 with Centos7. I could see this error in proxy_error_log under the affected domain's logs. All the dirs/files in /var/www/vhosts/ are owned by respective users (domain owners) and you can see that all of them are in psacln group. So solution was to add nginx also to this group, so he can see what he needs:

usermod -aG psacln nginx

And indeed, restart nginx and reload page with Ctrl+F5.

I found a work around: Moved the folder to nginx configuration folder, in my case "/etc/nginx/my-web-app". And then changed the permissions to root user "sudo chown -R root:root "my-web-app".

This is usually the privilege problem... For me, its because i use the /root/** as the nginx root, it need higher privilege. An easy way is just move the project into a directory created by yourself.

You can also add which user will run the nginx. In the nginx.conf file, make the following changes:

user root;

You can add the above line as the first line in your nginx conf. You can write the name of any user who has the permission to write in that directory.