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I have installed nginx on Ubuntu 12.04. However, nginx does not seem to follow symlinks. I understand that there is a config change required for this but I am not able to find where to make the change. Any help appreciated.

Neo
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3 Answers3

36

Have a look at the following config option from nginx docs:

Syntax:

disable_symlinks off;
disable_symlinks on |
if_not_owner [from=part];

Default: disable_symlinks off;

Context: http, server, location

This directive appeared in version 1.1.15.

The_Modeler
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cobaco
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    O.o very strange. I am on 1.6.1 and am getting an "unknown directive" error with this. I was using it as `location / { disable_symlinks off; }`. Any reason why this happens? – Ingwie Phoenix Apr 04 '15 at 03:46
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    You need to use this option in your `nginx.conf` configuration, not your website configuration. Edit `/etc/nginx/nginx.conf` and place the `disable_symlinks off; ` in the `http` block. – user1226868 Dec 25 '16 at 23:56
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    This is a pretty bad answer, because `off` is already the default. In other words, by default, all symlinks are already followed; not following symlinks is an extra security feature (that's off by default). – cnst Dec 10 '18 at 06:56
  • This is NOT a "pretty bad answer", as it shows and even provides a link to the docs. A default can change from distro to distro, so, assuming the default works in every case is what can be considered a bad practice. – Gustavo Pinsard Mar 01 '23 at 17:40
34

In my case nginx was already configured to follow symbolic links. But the issue was the user nginx could not access my home files and therefore symbolic link to my home directory was not working.

Example

Suppose we have symbolic link /usr/share/nginx/www/mylink -> /home/u/html

cd /usr/share/nginx/www
mkdir   -p  /home/u/html
sudo ln -sv /home/u/html mylink  # creates mylink -> /home/u/html

Give permissions

Give the read and execute permissions using chmod and find:

chmod +rx /home/u
chmod +rw /home/u/html
find /home/u/html/php -type d -exec chmod +rx {} +
find /home/u/html/php -type d -exec chmod +w  {} +  # optional

Notes:

  1. The permission x is named execute. But when applied to a directory, this permission allows to recurse the directory tree (see Unix modes).

  2. The command find ... -exec chmod ... recursively changes the permissions. We could also use the command chmod -R +rx /home/myuser/html but this last command also gives the execution permission to all regular files, and we do not want that. The option -type d execute chmod to only directories.

  3. The last optional command gives write permission if your PHP scripts require to write data. Try to limit write permission to only required directories for security reasons.

Test

No need to restart ngnix, just press Ctrl+F5 in your browser.

Caution: It is not recommended to create symbolic links pointing to your home directory because a mistake on read/write access or a wrong symbolic link may expose your digital data...

Reference: Arch wiki on nginx

oHo
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2

if olibre's answer doesn't help edit the file /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and add this line where you've specified your server root directory.

autoindex on;

save the file and restart server

/etc/init.d/nginx restart
bdx
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Asgher Hussain
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