I want to secure phymyadming using ssh tunnels by allowing only from localhost 127.0.0.1. I have followed the tutorial on http://deanbarrow.co.uk/the-quick-and-easy-way-to-secure-phpmyadmin/ but it is not working for me. Help is required My vps server root login is not permitted Using Putty, under SSH > Tunnels, set the source port as 8080 and destination as localhost:8080 with the local and auto options selected, then connected as usual as xyz as user name. xyz user has sudo root permission. I have already installed phpmyadmin in my server So I created a new directory using mkdir -p /var/www/localhost/html Then I moved my phpmyadmin directory to /var/www/localhost/html using mv /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/localhost/html Then I Created the configuration file as follows: nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/localhost This is the localhost configuration file content server { listen 127.0.0.1:8080; server_name localhost; access_log /var/www/localhost/logs/access.log; error_log /var/www/localhost/logs/error.log; # Allow connections from localhost only allow 127.0.0.1; deny all; location / { root /var/www/localhost/html; index index.html index.htm index.php; } location ~ .php$ { if (!-f $request_filename) { return 404; } fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/localhost/html$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } } Then I enabled my new localhost configuration with the following command: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/localhost /etc/nginx/sites-enabled Then restarted Nginx: using sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart Then in my browser I navigated to http://localhost:8080 But I am getting 403 Forbidden Message but the PMA favicon icon is visible. Then as per your advice I change permission of folder using chmod 775 -R /var/www/localhost/html But still not working The following is the error.log report [error] 2345#0: *1 directory index of "/var/www/localhost/html/" is forbidden, client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost:8080" This is the output of namei -om /var/www/localhost/html/phpmyadmin f: /var/www/localhost/html/phpmyadmin drwxr-xr-x root root / drwxr-xr-x root root / var drwxr-xr-x www-data www-data www drwxrwxr-x root root localhost drwxr-xr-x root root html drwxr-xr-x root root phpmyadmin Then I again test with changing permission as follows drwxr-xr-x root root / drwxr-xr-x root root / var drwxrwxr-x www-data www-data www drwxrwxr-x root root localhost drwxrwxr-x root root html drwxrwxr-x root root phpmyadmin Still not working. Kind help is welcome. Please note that I have another website running on port 80. Thanks in advance.