Access forbidden to folders in /Users/user/ on Monterey

Question

I am trying to setup nginx on an Apple silicon mac with MacOs Monterey.

Nginx has been installed with brew

If I edit the config file (/opt/homebrew/etc/nginx/nginx.conf) to set a new root directory, it works if I point it at a folder that is not associated with my user folder. For example

location / {
    root   /var/www/sites;
    index  index.html index.htm index.php;
}

However, if I set root to a folder in my home directory, e.g

location / {
    root   /Users/name/sites;
    index  index.html index.htm index.php;
}

I get a 403 Forbidden error.

Although this seems to be a common setup, lots of tutorials say to put your various sites in /User/username/Sites.

I've tried changing the permissions with chmod 755 sites and I've tried changing the owner of the sites directory to the root user. However none of these worked. I had similar issue when trying to setup apache.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong with my permissions? Should nginx (and/or apache) be able to access folders in /Users/user/..?

Answer 1

Add user username staff; to nginx.conf. That worked for me. Not sure it is good for security.