Using bindfs to solve permission issues for Nginx on Fedora

Edit 17th December, 2019: Modified fstab command to allow npm run dev on laravel installations

This article is based on http://blog.netgusto.com/solving-web-file-permissions-problem-once-and-for-all/ The solution mentioned there is for Debain based systems and apache. I modified it for Nginx on Fedora and altered permissions for 755 on folders and 644 on files instead of 770 on all as mentioned in that article.

bindfs is a simple utility that mounts directory as a disk. The description itself felt like a solution for an old problem. Getting permissions to work correctly is a pain in the a** for web developers coming from a Windows background. We can kinda solve this with User-Group but once we create a new file with our user then nginx user has no access to it. The Linux geniuses can solve it easily but I want a quick solution to this rather than working on permissions for every new project installed via Composer.

Install bindfs using dnf

sudo dnf install bindfs

Create a directory in your home directory where your nginx directory will be mounted.

Note: Replace amarnath with your username.

mkdir -p /home/amarnath/websites
chown -Rf amarnath:amarnath /home/amarnath/websites
chmod -Rf 770 /home/amarnath/websites

Then edit /etc/fstab and add the following. I used gedit and as I’m opening as root, saving will not be an issue.

bindfs#/usr/share/nginx/html /home/amarnath/websites fuse force-user=amarnath,force-group=amarnath,create-for-user=nginx,create-for-group=nginx,create-with-perms=god=rx:ud=rwx:gof=r:uf=rw,chgrp-ignore,chown-ignore,chmod-ignore 0 0

Note: If you are intending to compile or build node assets from the mounted location please use the following instead of the previous one.

bindfs#/usr/share/nginx/html /home/amarnath/websites fuse force-user=amarnath,force-group=amarnath,create-for-user=nginx,create-for-group=nginx,create-with-perms=god=rx:ud=rwx:gof=rx:uf=rwx,chgrp-ignore,chown-ignore,chmod-ignore 0 0

Once done run the following command

mount /home/amarnath/websites

Now you should see all your websites in your home directory. The permissions for you on these files will be amarnath:amarnath where as the ones you create will be looked in the /usr/share/nginx/html as nginx:nginx

Millions of thanks to the developers at bindfs. My biggest nightmare of web development on linux is solved.