Nginx Permission Denied Fix Guide

Nginx Permission Denied Fix Guide | Generated by AI

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Question: Nginx is failing to start with these new errors: could not open error log file (Permission denied), “user” directive ignored, and bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (Permission denied). How do I fix this?

Answer:

These errors show that nginx is not running as root at startup. The master process must start as root (or with enough privileges) to:

Bind to TCP port 80 (ports below 1024 are privileged)
Open/write to log files in /var/log/nginx/ (usually owned by root or www-data)

Right now your nginx is being started as a normal user (most likely lzw), which causes both the bind() and log file errors.

Root cause summary

You previously set nginx to run as user lzw (via systemctl edit or user directive), but:

Normal users cannot bind port 80
Normal users cannot write to /var/log/nginx/
The user directive is ignored unless the master process starts as root

→ nginx fails immediately during startup.

Correct & Recommended Fix (undo non-root user)

Remove the override that sets User=lzw

sudo rm -f /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service.d/override.conf
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

This removes any custom User= and Group= settings you added.

(Optional but recommended) Make sure no user line exists in nginx.conf

Open the config:
```
sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
```
Look for and comment out or delete any line like:
```
user lzw lzw;
# or
user lzw;
```
Save the file.
Test configuration and restart nginx
```
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl status nginx
```
You should now see:
- Active: active (running)
- No permission denied errors on port 80 or logs
- Worker processes running as www-data (or whatever group is default)

Fix the original folder access (so /movies/ stops giving 403)

# Give nginx group access to your downloads folder
sudo chgrp -R www-data /home/lzw/qDownloads
sudo chmod -R g+rx /home/lzw/qDownloads
   
# Allow nginx to enter your home directory
sudo chmod g+x /home/lzw

Reload nginx:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Then open http://192.168.1.36/movies/ in your browser — it should show directory listing.

If you really want nginx to run fully as lzw (not recommended)

You must avoid privileged operations:

Change listen 80; → listen 8080; (or any port > 1024)
Move logs to a folder lzw owns:

In /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:
```
user lzw lzw;
error_log  /home/lzw/nginx/error.log warn;
http {
    access_log /home/lzw/nginx/access.log;
}
```
Create the folder first:
```
mkdir -p /home/lzw/nginx
chown lzw:lzw /home/lzw/nginx
```
But again: this only makes sense for testing or if port 80 is blocked/used by something else. For normal use → keep the default root-master + www-data-workers model.

Quick one-liner sequence to recover right now

sudo rm -f /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service.d/override.conf
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo sed -i '/^user\s\+lzw/d' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf   # remove user line if present
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl status nginx

After this nginx should start normally again. Then apply the group permissions fix for your /movies/ location.

References:

None needed – this follows standard nginx startup and Linux privilege behavior.

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