Constant 403 error with nginx on osx

Problem

Despite checking permissions, nginx will return nothing but a 403 error page.

Solution

Added this line

nginx.conf

 

 

 

 

 

Default

 

2	user myusername staff;

 

Background

I installed nginx on my mac like everyone else using this guide, and it worked for my site until I changed the configuration to a different directory a second time. Something was different.

I started to get 403 errors, so I checked the logs and didn’t find anything more helpful than this.

/usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log

 

 

 

 

 

Default

 

1 2 3

2014/04/19 15:56:36 [error] 1825#0: *1 "/usr/local/var/www/codename/index.html" is forbidden (13: Permission denied), client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost:8080"

After about 2 hours burned changing permissions on everything imaginable I found this guy, who figured out /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf, needs the user line to read

New nginx.conf

 

 

 

 

 

INI

 

2	user myusername staff;

It was that simple!