rails deployment using nginx & unicorn: 403 forbidden error

Question

I have just setup a VPS (Centos 6.3) and deploy my app using capistrano. The VPS runs nginx & unicorn. I'm getting a 403 Forbidden error when visiting the server: this line appears in /var/log/nginx/error.log:

*5 directory index of "/var/www/current/public/" is forbidden, client: xxxxx,   server: xxx, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "xxxx"

However, if I add the index.html to my rails app in ./public, everything works without problem. This makes me think that the routes aren't working.

I have also set the permissions for all folders of /var/www using chmod -R 755 * (probably not the best idea in the long run but wanted to exclude this as a source of error). Is there any other way to debug this in more detail (the error.log file does not tell me anything else)?

Any help is much appreciated.

This is my routes.rb file (everything's working locally in development)

MyTest::Application.routes.draw do

  root :to => 'welcome#index'
end

The following is my nginx.conf file:

upstream unicorn {
  server unix:/tmp/unicorn.blog.sock fail_timeout=0;
}

server {
  listen 80 default deferred;
  # server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/current/public;

  location ^~ /assets/ {
    gzip_static on;
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control public;
  }

  try_files $uri/index.html $uri @unicorn;
  location @unicorn {
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_pass http://unicorn;
  }

  error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;
  client_max_body_size 4G;
  keepalive_timeout 5;
}

This is the unicorn_init.sh:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# Feel free to change any of the following variables for your app:
TIMEOUT=${TIMEOUT-60}
APP_ROOT=/var/www/current
PID=$APP_ROOT/tmp/pids/unicorn.pid
CMD="cd $APP_ROOT; bundle exec unicorn -D -c $APP_ROOT/config/unicorn.rb -E production"
AS_USER=##########
set -u

OLD_PIN="$PID.oldbin"

sig () {
  test -s "$PID" && kill -$1 `cat $PID`
}

oldsig () {
  test -s $OLD_PIN && kill -$1 `cat $OLD_PIN`
}

run () {
  if [ "$(id -un)" = "$AS_USER" ]; then
    eval $1
  else
    su -c "$1" - $AS_USER
  fi
}

case "$1" in
start)
  sig 0 && echo >&2 "Already running" && exit 0
  run "$CMD"
  ;;
stop)
  sig QUIT && exit 0
  echo >&2 "Not running"
  ;;
force-stop)
  sig TERM && exit 0
  echo >&2 "Not running"
  ;;
restart|reload)
  sig HUP && echo reloaded OK && exit 0
  echo >&2 "Couldn't reload, starting '$CMD' instead"
  run "$CMD"
  ;;
upgrade)
  if sig USR2 && sleep 2 && sig 0 && oldsig QUIT
  then
    n=$TIMEOUT
    while test -s $OLD_PIN && test $n -ge 0
    do
      printf '.' && sleep 1 && n=$(( $n - 1 ))
    done
    echo

    if test $n -lt 0 && test -s $OLD_PIN
    then
      echo >&2 "$OLD_PIN still exists after $TIMEOUT seconds"
      exit 1
    fi
    exit 0
  fi
  echo >&2 "Couldn't upgrade, starting '$CMD' instead"
  run "$CMD"
  ;;
reopen-logs)
  sig USR1
  ;;
*)
  echo >&2 "Usage: $0 <start|stop|restart|upgrade|force-stop|reopen-logs>"
  exit 1
  ;;
esac

And finally, my Gemfile:

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.2.12'

# Bundle edge Rails instead:
# gem 'rails', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/rails.git'

gem 'pg'
gem 'execjs', '~> 1.4.0'
gem 'therubyracer'
gem "less-rails"

# Gems used only for assets and not required
# in production environments by default.
group :assets do
  gem 'sass-rails',   '~> 3.2.3'
  gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.1'

  # See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs#readme for more supported runtimes
  # gem 'therubyracer', :platforms => :ruby

  gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.0.3'
end

gem 'jquery-rails'

# To use ActiveModel has_secure_password
# gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '~> 3.0.0'

# To use Jbuilder templates for JSON
# gem 'jbuilder'

# Use unicorn as the app server
 gem 'unicorn'

# Deploy with Capistrano
 gem 'capistrano'

# To use debugger
# gem 'debugger'


gem "haml", "~> 4.0.0"
gem 'twitter-bootstrap-rails', '~> 2.2.6'
gem "simple_form", "~> 2.1.0"

This is my unicorn.rb:

root = "/var/www/current"
working_directory root
pid "#{root}/tmp/pids/unicorn.pid"
stderr_path "#{root}/log/unicorn.log"
stdout_path "#{root}/log/unicorn.log"

listen "/tmp/unicorn.blog.sock"
worker_processes 4
timeout 30

did you work through this guide? nginxlibrary.com/403-forbidden-error — phoet
yes, I checked the permissions but as mentioned everything works if I include /public/index.html (see bold text above). There just seems to be a problem with root :to => 'welcome#index' — apotry

apotry apotry · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-18T12:12:51

I figured it out. On Centos 6.3 the standard configurations are stored in /etc/nginx/conf.d/ After deleting the default configuration in this directory everything worked. Note that it probably is better to symlink the custom nginx config file into /etc/nginx/conf.d instead of /etc/nginx/sites-enabled (I had to create this directory on my system and then include it in my /etc/nginx/nginx.conf).

rails deployment using nginx & unicorn: 403 forbidden error

1 Answers