Fixing nginx “13: Permission Denied” Error on RHEL8 with SELinux

Takahiro Iwasa

8/28/2021

1 min read

nginx SELinux

When configuring nginx to route traffic to a non-standard port such as 1080 on an instance, you may encounter the error 13: Permission denied. This issue often arises due to SELinux restrictions.

1
systemd[1]: Starting The nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server...
2
nginx[1626]: nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
3
nginx[1626]: nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:1080 failed (13: Permission denied)
4
nginx[1626]: nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed
5
systemd[1]: nginx.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
6
systemd[1]: nginx.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
7
systemd[1]: Failed to start The nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server.

Solution

To resolve the issue, you need to allow nginx to use the custom port 1080 by updating SELinux policies. Use the following command:

sudo semanage port -a -t http_port_t -p tcp 1080

If you encounter the error sudo: semanage: command not found, install the required package with these commands:

sudo dnf provides /usr/sbin/semanage
sudo dnf install policycoreutils-python-utils