Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden

configurationdomain-namehttp-status-code-403nginx

I have 3 domain names and am trying to host all 3 sites on one server (a Digital Ocean droplet) using Nginx.

mysite1.name
mysite2.name
mysite3.name

Only 1 of them works. The other two result in 403 errors (in the same way).

In my nginx error log, I see: [error] 13108#0: *1 directory index of "/usr/share/nginx/mysite2.name/live/" is forbidden.

My sites-enabled config is:

server {
        server_name www.mysite2.name;
        return 301 $scheme://mysite2.name$request_uri;
}
server {
        server_name     mysite2.name;

        root /usr/share/nginx/mysite2.name/live/;
        index index.html index.htm index.php;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html index.php;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }
}

All 3 sites have nearly identical config files.

Each site's files are in folders like /usr/share/nginx/mysite1.name/someFolder, and then /usr/share/nginx/mysite1.name/live is a symlink to that. (Same for mysite2 and mysite3.)

I've looked at Nginx 403 forbidden for all files but that didn't help.

Any ideas on what might be wrong?

Best Answer

If you have directory indexing off, and is having this problem, it's probably because the try_files you are using has a directory option:

location / {
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html index.php;
}                 ^ that is the issue

Remove it and it should work:

location / {
  try_files $uri /index.html index.php;
}

Why this happens

TL;DR: This is caused because nginx will try to index the directory, and be blocked by itself. Throwing the error mentioned by OP.

try_files $uri $uri/ means, from the root directory, try the file pointed by the uri, if that does not exists, try a directory instead (hence the /). When nginx access a directory, it tries to index it and return the list of files inside it to the browser/client, however by default directory indexing is disabled, and so it returns the error "Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden".

Directory indexing is controlled by the autoindex option: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_autoindex_module.html

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