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

Question

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?

Answer 1

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