NGINX: (13: Permission denied) while connecting to upstream:[nginx]

 

Disclaimer

Make sure there are no security implications for your use-case before running this.

Answer

I had a similar issue getting Fedora 20, Nginx, Node.js, and Ghost (blog) to work. It turns out my issue was due to SELinux.

This should solve the problem:

setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

django - (13: Permission denied) while connecting to upstream:[nginx] - Stack Overflow

Details

I checked for errors in the SELinux logs:

sudo cat /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep nginx | grep denied

And found that running the following commands fixed my issue:

sudo cat /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep nginx | grep denied | audit2allow -M mynginx
sudo semodule -i mynginx.pp

Option #2 (untested, but probably more secure)

setsebool -P httpd_can_network_relay 1

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/152358/difference-between-selinux-booleans-httpd-can-network-relay-and-httpd-can-net

References

http://blog.frag-gustav.de/2013/07/21/nginx-selinux-me-mad/
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SELinux/Tutorials/Where_to_find_SELinux_permission_denial_details
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SELinux/Tutorials/Managing_network_port_labels