Nginx + Passenger + Rails - 403 forbidden

Question

There are tons of people having the same or similar problem but they all resolved with different solutions. I am having a hard time figuring out what is wrong with my setup here.

I just installed Nginx 1.4.1, Passenger 4.0.7, Ruby 2.0.0p247 and Rails 4.0.0.

Note:

• I have installed nginx @ /home/deployer/nginx
• I am using rubyenv
• I have a CNAME record for www.example.com that points to myapp.cloud.com

I added this block at the end of ~/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name www.example.com;
  root /home/deployer/sites/www.example.com/public;
  passenger_enabled on;
}

I have a public Symlink in /home/deployer/sites/www.example.com that points to /home/deployer/src/myapp/gateway/public/

I am having 2 issues:

1. If I do not setup a default root route for my rails app, I do not see the standard Rails Welcome page when I go to the root of my site. Instead, I keep getting the 403 Forbidden page. But, if I add an index.html in the public folder, I do see that page being rendered when I go http://www.example.com/

2. If I set the default root route to controller#action, I do not see that controller-action being rendered when I go to the root of my site. Instead, this is the error I get in ~/nginx/logs/error.log:

---

2013/07/08 19:57:05 [error] 34157#0: *1 directory index of
"/home/deployer/sites/www.example.com/public/" is forbidden, 
client: 76.XX.XX.29, server: www.example.com, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", 
host: "www.example.com"

---

Just in-case, here is my complete nginx.config file:

#user  nobody;
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/deployer/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/passenger-4.0.7;
    passenger_ruby /home/deployer/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/bin/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  localhost;

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

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

        #error_page  404              /404.html;

        # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
        #
        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }

        # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1;
        #}

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    root           html;
        #    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        #    fastcgi_index  index.php;
        #    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
        #    include        fastcgi_params;
        #}

        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        #location ~ /\.ht {
        #    deny  all;
        #}
    }


    # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       8000;
    #    listen       somename:8080;
    #    server_name  somename  alias  another.alias;

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


    # HTTPS server
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       443;
    #    server_name  localhost;

    #    ssl                  on;
    #    ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
    #    ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

    #    ssl_session_timeout  5m;

    #    ssl_protocols  SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
    #    ssl_ciphers  HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
    #    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers   on;

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

    server {
      listen 80;
      server_name www.example.com;
      root /home/deployer/sites/www.example.com/public;
      passenger_enabled on;
   }
}

Answer 1

You cannot use the symlink that way. See How Phusion Passenger detects whether a virtual host is a web application