403 forbidden when configuring Nginx on Debian 10 (Linode platform)

Posted on November 3, 2021
Nginx Debian 10
Asked by duyngle

Hi DigitalOceanteam,

I followed this instruction to set up Nginx on Debian (via Linode platform) https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-nginx-on-debian-10 Everything is good until the last step where it shows 403 instead of the index.html (typing mydomain.com).

I’m pretty stuck. I’d be grateful if you can help me detect what the problem is.

Best, Ethan

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Boyan Iliev • November 3, 2021

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

Make sure that you assign ownership of the directory in which the index.html file is.

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/your_domain

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain/html

Also, the index.html file must be in the root configured directory that you added. So, if your config looks like this:

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        root /var/www/your_domain/html;
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name your_domain www.your_domain;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}

Then the index.html file should be in the /var/www/your_domain/html directory.

If you do all of this and the 403 still shows up, then check the Nginx error log to get some more information on what the problem could be. To do that just run this command: