Nginx User Change Risks and Steps

Nginx User Change Risks and Steps | Generated by AI

Home 2026.02

Question: What if I change the Nginx running user to ‘lzw’ instead of ‘www-data’?

Answer:

You can change Nginx to run as your own user lzw. This will solve the permission problem immediately because Nginx will then have the same access rights as you do (you can read /home/lzw/qDownloads without any extra chmod).

However, this approach has important advantages and disadvantages. Here is a clear comparison and how to do it safely.

Advantages

Immediate fix — no need to change folder permissions, chmod, chgrp, etc.
Very convenient for personal/test/development machines
Nginx can access anything your user lzw can access

Big disadvantages / security risks

If there is any nginx security vulnerability (remote code execution, misconfiguration, etc.), the attacker gets full rights as user lzw → can read all your files, ssh keys, qBittorrent downloads, personal data, etc.
www-data is a low-privilege system user with no login shell and very limited rights → much safer
Breaks standard Ubuntu/Debian packaging expectations (logrotate, apparmor profiles, php-fpm pools, etc. expect www-data)
Some monitoring/security tools flag non-standard users as suspicious

→ Only do this on a private, non-internet-facing machine or a test setup.

How to change Nginx to run as user `lzw`

Two main ways (choose one):

Method 1 – Edit the systemd service file (recommended, cleanest)

sudo systemctl edit nginx

This opens an editor. Paste the following:

[Service]
User=lzw
Group=lzw

Save and exit.

Then reload systemd and restart nginx:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Method 2 – Edit the main nginx config (older / less preferred way)

Edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

user lzw lzw;    # first = user, second = group

Then restart:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx

After changing

Check that nginx is now running as lzw:

ps aux | grep nginx
# You should see lines like: lzw   ... nginx: worker process

Then test your /movies/ URL again — it should work without any 403 errors (assuming the directory exists and has files).

Recommendation summary – 2026 best practice

Situation	Recommended approach
Personal NAS / home server	Change to user `lzw` (quick & easy)
Any public-facing / internet server	Keep `www-data` + fix permissions (chmod/chgrp)
You want both convenience + safety	Use `chgrp www-data` + `chmod g+rx` method

If you decide to go with user lzw, Method 1 (systemd override) is the cleanest and survives package upgrades.

References:

None needed – this is standard nginx + systemd configuration knowledge.

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