👀 Views: 3 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-05

nginx ssl ubuntu permissions

I'm following best practices but I'm prototyping a solution and I'm a bit lost with I'm working on a personal project and I'm trying to configure SSL for my Nginx server on Ubuntu 22.04, but every time I attempt to access my site over HTTPS, I receive a '403 Forbidden' behavior. My configuration files seem fine, and I've double-checked the permissions on the web root directory. Here’s what my server block looks like: ```nginx server { listen 443 ssl; server_name example.com; ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key; root /var/www/example.com; index index.html; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } } ``` I've also verified that the SSL certificate and key exist at the specified paths, and they have the correct permissions: ```bash ls -l /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.crt ls -l /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key ``` Both show that they are readable by the Nginx user (`www-data`). Additionally, I checked the Nginx behavior logs for more insight, and I keep seeing lines like this: ```log 2023/10/10 12:00:00 [behavior] 12345#12345: *1 open() "/var/www/example.com/index.html" failed (13: Permission denied), client: 192.168.1.10, server: example.com, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "example.com" ``` I noticed that even though the files are set to be readable, the parent directories seem to have restrictive permissions. The permissions for the `/var/www` directory are set to `750`, which means only the owner and group can access it. I tried changing it to `755`, but that didn't solve the scenario either. I also ran `sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com` to ensure the Nginx user has ownership of the files. What could be causing this persistent '403 Forbidden' behavior despite the configurations appearing correct? What's the best practice here? I'm developing on Windows 10 with Nginx. Has anyone dealt with something similar? For context: I'm using Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04. Am I missing something obvious? For context: I'm using Nginx on CentOS. The stack includes Nginx and several other technologies. I'm open to any suggestions.