Why does Nginx return a 403 even though all permissions are set properly?

I experienced the same problem and it was due to SELinux.

To check if SELinux is running:

# getenforce

To disable SELinux until next reboot:

# setenforce Permissive

Restart Nginx and see if the problem persists. If you would like to permanently alter the settings you can edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux

If SELinux is your problem you can run the following to allow nginx to serve your www directory (make sure you turn SELinux back on before testing this. i.e, # setenforce Enforcing)

# chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /path/to/www

If you're still having issues take a look at the boolean flags in getsebool -a, in particular you may need to turn on httpd_can_network_connect for network access

# setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on

For me it was enough to allow http to serve my www directory.

First of all you have to run following command to allow nginx to access filesystem

sudo setsebool -P httpd_read_user_content 1

You can check if the files or directory with following command:

ls -Z

If it is still not accessible, you can try changing the SELinux property of the files and folder with following command:

chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /path/to/www

However, above command cannot apply to files under FUSE or NFS system.

To enable serving files from FUSE mounts, you can use:

setsebool httpd_use_fusefs 1

To enable serving files from NFS mounts, you can use:

setsebool httpd_use_nfs 1