How to fix PHP open_basedir restriction restricting access to subdirectory on nginx server

Question

I am using nginx with php-fpm, and we are receiving a lot of errors like this:

2022/01/23 12:48:13 [error] 5514#5514: *9277 FastCGI sent in stderr: "PHP message: PHP Warning: file_exists(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/var/www/vhosts/evtm.dev.nick/wp-content/db.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/var/www/vhosts/evtm.dev.nick/:/usr/lib/php/:/tmp/:/data/sucuri:/var/www/prepend/) in /var/www/vhosts/evtm.dev.nick/wp-includes/load.php on line 545" while reading response header from upstream, client: 10.0.2.33, server: dev-nick.evtm.com, request: "POST /?wc-ajax=get_refreshed_fragments HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "dev-nick.evtm.com", referrer: "https://dev-nick.evtm.com/" 

It is saying that the file /var/www/vhosts/evtm.dev.nick/wp-content/db.php is not within the allowed path of /var/www/vhosts/evtm.dev.nick - when it clearly appears to be.

Is there something preventing it from working recursively?

Answer 1

The issue was a symlink file db.php. This was copied from another folder on another instance, and the symlink was pointing to that original file.

Unlinking the file and linking to the correct one resolved the issue.