Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden

Question

If you have directory indexing off, and is having this problem, it's probably because the try_files you are using has a directory option:

location / {
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html index.php;
}                 ^ that is the issue

Remove it and it should work:

location / {
  try_files $uri /index.html index.php;
} 

Why this happens

TL;DR: This is caused because nginx will try to index the directory, and be blocked by itself. Throwing the error mentioned by OP.

try_files $uri $uri/ means, from the root directory, try the file pointed by the uri, if that does not exists, try a directory instead (hence the /). When nginx access a directory, it tries to index it and return the list of files inside it to the browser/client, however by default directory indexing is disabled, and so it returns the error "Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden".

Directory indexing is controlled by the autoindex option: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_autoindex_module.html

Here is the config that works:

server {
    server_name www.mysite2.name;
    return 301 $scheme://mysite2.name$request_uri;
}
server {
    #This config is based on https://github.com/daylerees/laravel-website-configs/blob/6db24701073dbe34d2d58fea3a3c6b3c0cd5685b/nginx.conf
    server_name mysite2.name;

     # The location of our project's public directory.
    root /usr/share/nginx/mysite2/live/public/;

     # Point index to the Laravel front controller.
    index           index.php;

    location / {
        # URLs to attempt, including pretty ones.
        try_files   $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # Remove trailing slash to please routing system.
    if (!-d $request_filename) {
            rewrite     ^/(.+)/$ /$1 permanent;
    }

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    #   # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
    #   # With php5-fpm:
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param                   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

}

Then the only output in the browser was a Laravel error: “Whoops, looks like something went wrong.”

Do NOT run chmod -R 777 app/storage (note). Making something world-writable is bad security.

chmod -R 755 app/storage works and is more secure.

If you're simply trying to list directory contents use autoindex on; like:

location /somedir {
       autoindex on;
}

---

server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  domain.com www.domain.com;
        access_log  /var/...........................;
        root   /path/to/root;
        location / {
                index  index.php index.html index.htm;
        }
        location /somedir {
               autoindex on;
        }
}

I encountered similar error
--- "403 Forbidden" in the webpage
--- "13: Permission denied" in the error log at /var/log/nginx/error.log

Below 3 Steps worked for me:

1: Open Terminal, saw something like below

user1@comp1:/home/www/

So, my user name is "user1" (from above)

2: Changed user in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

# user www-data;
user user1;

3: Reloaded the nginx

sudo nginx -s reload  

---

Additionally, I have applied file/folder permissions (before I did above 3 steps)
(755 to my directory, say /dir1/) & (644 for files under that directory):
(I am not sure, if this additional step is really required, just above 3 steps might be enough):

chmod 755 ./dir1/
chmod 644 ./dir1/*.*

Hope this helps quick someone. Best of luck.

In fact there are several things you need to check. 1. check your nginx's running status

ps -ef|grep nginx

ps aux|grep nginx|grep -v grep

Here we need to check who is running nginx. please remember the user and group

2. check folder's access status

   ls -alt

3. compare with the folder's status with nginx's

(1) if folder's access status is not right

sudo chmod 755 /your_folder_path

(2) if folder's user and group are not the same with nginx's running's

sudo chown your_user_name:your_group_name /your_folder_path

and change nginx's running username and group

nginx -h

to find where is nginx configuration file

sudo vi /your_nginx_configuration_file

//in the file change its user and group
user your_user_name your_group_name;

//restart your nginx
sudo nginx -s reload

Because nginx default running's user is nobody and group is nobody. if we haven't notice this user and group, 403 will be introduced.

I had the same problem, the logfile showed me this error:

2016/03/30 14:35:51 [error] 11915#0: *3 directory index of "path_scripts/viewerjs/" is forbidden, client: IP.IP.IP.IP,     server: domain.com, request: "GET /scripts/viewerjs/ HTTP/1.1", host: "domain", referrer: "domain.com/new_project/do_update"

I am hosting a PHP app with codeignitor framework. When i wanted to view uploaded files i received a 403 Error.

The problem was, that the nginx.conf was not properly defined. Instead of

index index.html index.htm index.php

i only included

index index.php

I have an index.php in my root and i thought that was enough, i was wrong ;) The hint gave me NginxLibrary

You might get this because of Nginx policy (eg. "deny"), or you might get this because of Nginx misconfiguration, or you might get this because of filesystem restrictions.

You can determine if its the later (and possibly see evidence of a misconfiguration by using strace (except, the OP won't have access to that):

# pidof nginx
11853 11852

# strace -p 11853 -p 11852 -e trace=file -f
Process 11853 attached - interrupt to quit
Process 11852 attached - interrupt to quit
[pid 11853] stat("/var/www/html/kibanaindex.html", 0x7ffe04e93000) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 11853] stat("/var/www/html/kibana", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
^CProcess 11853 detached
Process 11852 detached

Here I'm inspecting the filesystem activity done by nginx while a ran a test (I had the same error as you).

Here's a selected part of my config at the time

    location /kibana/3/ {
        alias /var/www/html/kibana;
        index index.html;
    }

In my case, as strace quite clearly shows, the joining of in the "alias" to the "index" was not what I had expected, and it seems I need to get into the habit of always appending directory names with a /, so in my case, the following worked:

    location /kibana/3/ {
        alias /var/www/html/kibana/;
        index index.html;
    }