Nginx error: (13: Permission denied) while connecting to upstream

Question

I am getting this error in my nginx-error.log file:

2014/02/17 03:42:20 [crit] 5455#0: *1 connect() to unix:/tmp/uwsgi.sock failed (13: Permission denied) while connecting to upstream, client: xx.xx.x.xxx, server: localhost, request: "GET /users HTTP/1.1", upstream: "uwsgi://unix:/tmp/uwsgi.sock:", host: "EC2.amazonaws.com"

The browser also shows a 502 Bad Gateway Error. The output of a curl is the same, Bad Gateway html

I've tried to fix it by changing permissions for /tmp/uwsgi.sock to 777. That didn't work. I also added myself to the www-data group (a couple questions that looked similar suggested that). Also, no dice.

Here is my nginx.conf file:

nginx.conf

worker_processes 1;
worker_rlimit_nofile 8192;

events {
  worker_connections  3000; 
}

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on; 
    #tcp_nopush     on; 

    keepalive_timeout  65; 

    #gzip  on; 

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

I am running a Flask application with Nginsx and Uwsgi, just to be thorough in my explanation. If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate them.

---

EDIT

I have been asked to provide my uwsgi config file. So, I never personally wrote my nginx or my uwsgi file. I followed the guide here which sets everything up using ansible-playbook. The nginx.conf file was generated automatically, but there was nothing in /etc/uwsgi except a README file in both apps-enabled and apps-available folders. Do I need to create my own config file for uwsgi? I was under the impression that ansible took care of all of those things.

I believe that ansible-playbook figured out my uwsgi configuration since when I run this command

uwsgi -s /tmp/uwsgi.sock -w my_app:app

it starts up and outputs this:

*** Starting uWSGI 2.0.1 (64bit) on [Mon Feb 17 20:03:08 2014] ***
compiled with version: 4.7.3 on 10 February 2014 18:26:16
os: Linux-3.11.0-15-generic #25-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 30 17:22:01 UTC 2014
nodename: ip-10-9-xxx-xxx
machine: x86_64
clock source: unix
detected number of CPU cores: 1
current working directory: /home/username/Project
detected binary path: /usr/local/bin/uwsgi
!!! no internal routing support, rebuild with pcre support !!!
*** WARNING: you are running uWSGI without its master process manager ***
your processes number limit is 4548
your memory page size is 4096 bytes
detected max file descriptor number: 1024
lock engine: pthread robust mutexes
thunder lock: disabled (you can enable it with --thunder-lock)
uwsgi socket 0 bound to UNIX address /tmp/uwsgi.sock fd 3
Python version: 2.7.5+ (default, Sep 19 2013, 13:52:09)  [GCC 4.8.1]
*** Python threads support is disabled. You can enable it with --enable-threads ***
Python main interpreter initialized at 0x1f60260
your server socket listen backlog is limited to 100 connections
your mercy for graceful operations on workers is 60 seconds
mapped 72760 bytes (71 KB) for 1 cores
*** Operational MODE: single process ***
WSGI app 0 (mountpoint='') ready in 3 seconds on interpreter 0x1f60260 pid: 26790 (default app)
*** uWSGI is running in multiple interpreter mode ***
spawned uWSGI worker 1 (and the only) (pid: 26790, cores: 1)

Answer 1

The permission issue occurs because uwsgi resets the ownership and permissions of /tmp/uwsgi.sock to 755 and the user running uwsgi every time uwsgi starts.

The correct way to solve the problem is to make uwsgi change the ownership and/or permission of /tmp/uwsgi.sock such that nginx can write to this socket. Therefore, there are three possible solutions.

1. Run uwsgi as the www-data user so that this user owns the socket file created by it.

   uwsgi -s /tmp/uwsgi.sock -w my_app:app --uid www-data --gid www-data
   

2. Change the ownership of the socket file so that www-data owns it.

   uwsgi -s /tmp/uwsgi.sock -w my_app:app --chown-socket=www-data:www-data
   

3. Change the permissions of the socket file, so that www-data can write to it.

   uwsgi -s /tmp/uwsgi.sock -w my_app:app --chmod-socket=666
   

I prefer the first approach because it does not leave uwsgi running as root.

The first two commands need to be run as root user. The third command does not need to be run as root user.

The first command leaves uwsgi running as www-data user. The second and third commands leave uwsgi running as the actual user that ran the command.

The first and second command allow only www-data user to write to the socket. The third command allows any user to write to the socket.

I prefer the first approach because it does not leave uwsgi running as root user and it does not make the socket file world-writeable .