Nginx File Permission Pitfall — Prevention Checklist

The bug: New files created in the ShopProQuote project default to 600 (owner-only). Nginx runs as www-data and returns 403 Forbidden when it can't read them. This silently breaks the site.

How it manifests:

Pages load but are completely un-styled (CSS files blocked)
JS modules fail silently with no console error visible to the user (ES module import fails with 403)
Tabs don't work, data doesn't load, buttons do nothing — because the JS module that registers event handlers never executed

Files broken by this in production (2026-06-13):

dist/custom.css → site completely un-styled, all Tailwind classes missing
shared/debug.js → every JS module that imports from it failed (repair-orders.js, dashboard.js, quote-tab-manager.js, etc.)
shared/skeleton.js → skeleton loading states failed

Root cause: The Linux umask for files created by dev tools (workers, write_file tool, touch) produces 600. Nginx needs 644 or better.

Prevention — run after creating ANY new file:

# Fix all JS files with bad permissions
find /mnt/seagate8tb/Websites/ShopProQuote -name "*.js" -perm 600 -exec chmod 644 {} \;

# Fix all CSS files
find /mnt/seagate8tb/Websites/ShopProQuote -name "*.css" -perm 600 -exec chmod 644 {} \;

# Fix all HTML files
find /mnt/seagate8tb/Websites/ShopProQuote -name "*.html" -perm 600 -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Quick diagnostic:

# Check which files are inaccessible to nginx
find /mnt/seagate8tb/Websites/ShopProQuote -perm 600 -name "*.js" -o -name "*.css" -perm 600 | while read f; do
  code=$(curl -sk -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "https://localhost/${f#/mnt/seagate8tb/Websites/ShopProQuote/}")
  echo "$code $f"
done

# Or check nginx error log directly
tail -50 /var/log/nginx/error.log | grep "Permission denied"

When to suspect this: Whenever you create a new shared module, CSS file, or JS utility and suddenly multiple pages break with no obvious JS errors. The browser console may show a failed module import but the root 403 is only visible in nginx logs or curl. Always chmod 644 after creating new project files.

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Nginx File Permission Pitfall — Prevention Checklist

2.1 KiB

Raw Blame History