403 Forbidden on Rails app w/ Nginx, Passenger

Question

First off, apologies: I know the 403 Forbidden question is a common one for Rails/Nginx installs, but none of the answers I've read so far have solved it for me.

Disclaimer: This is my first time deploying a Rails app somewhere that isn't Heroku. Please be gentle. ;)

Situation: I have a Rails app running on an Ubuntu 12.04 server, running Nginx (installed with Passenger).

I've deployed my app to my server correctly, but when I attempt to access the site, I receive a 403 Forbidden error.

Checking my error logs, I see:

2013/10/23 22:47:01 [error] 27954#0: *105 directory index of "/var/www/colepeters.com/current/public/" is forbidden, client: 50.3…server: colepeters.com, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "colepeters.com"
2013/10/23 22:47:10 [error] 27954#0: *106 directory index of "/var/www/colepeters.com/current/public/" is forbidden, client: 184…server: colepeters.com, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "colepeters.com"
2013/10/23 22:47:12 [error] 27954#0: *107 directory index of "/var/www/colepeters.com/current/public/" is forbidden, client: 151…server: colepeters.com, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "colepeters.com"

However, when checking permissions on this directory, I see that the user I have setup to use Nginx had both read and execute permissions on it.

Here's the relevant info from my nginx.conf:

user  XXXX;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    passenger_root /home/cole/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/gems/passenger-4.0.21;
    passenger_ruby /home/cole/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-2.0.0-p247/ruby;

    include       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  logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

    server {
       listen       80;
        server_name  colepeters.com www.colepeters.com;
        passenger_enabled on;
        root /var/www/colepeters.com/current/public/;
        rails_env production;

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

        location / {
          root   /var/www/colepeters.com/current/public;
          index  index.html index.htm;
          # autoindex on;
        }

I would greatly appreciate any help on resolving this. Thanks!

UPDATE I have since corrected the erroneus passenger_ruby path, but the 403 Forbidden is persisting, even after restarting Nginx.

Answer 1

I got the same error. In my case, I fixed it by removing the location / {} entry. - or make sure that your user have permission to your rails project

...
server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  127.0.0.1;
    passenger_enabled on;
    rails_env production;
    root /www/kalender/public ;

    #charset koi8-r;

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

    #location / {
       #root   html;
        #index  index.html index.htm;
    #}

Answer 2

You can check the path of your passenger installation with

passenger-config --root

and the path of your ruby installation with

which ruby

then compare with the inserted in nginx.conf.

Answer 3

The key things are: Remove the location block for the / section, assuming that the Rails application is accessible at /

Ensure the passenger_ruby is pointing to the rvm wrapper script for the selected ruby version

Add execute permissions to user, group and others to all the directories reaching to

/var/www/rails_app/public folder 
/var
/var/www
/var/www/rails_app
/var/www/rails_app/public_foler 

Answer 4

you also have config-file for passenger called passenger.conf by default in /etc/nginx/conf.d/passenger.conf there you have to put correct roots. you can check the roots with these two commands

passenger-config --root

and

which ruby

so when you get these roots you have to compare them with such in your passenger.conf file and it can be e.g. smth like this

#passenger-config --root
passenger_root /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini;
#which ruby
passenger_ruby /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/bin/ruby;
passenger_instance_registry_dir /var/run/passenger-instreg;

so if you use this way don't forget to make in http section of your nginx.conf

include /etc/nginx/conf.d/passenger.conf

as well as inserting in server section

passenger_enabled on;

Answer 5

You are declaring the root twice inside the server block and inside the /location block as well as directing nginx to use the index directive. Also remove the "/" after public folder

try doing this

user  XXXX;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    passenger_root /home/cole/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/gems/passenger-4.0.21;
    passenger_ruby /home/cole/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-2.0.0-p247/ruby;

    include       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  logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

    server {
       listen       80;
        server_name  colepeters.com www.colepeters.com;
        passenger_enabled on;
        root /var/www/colepeters.com/current/public;
        rails_env production;

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

    }
}

Answer 6

Adding passenger_enabled on; to the server directive worked for me.