Custom 403 page not working(?) in combination with "deny all"

(apologies if this is a re-post, but the GMANE auto-authorizer
seems to have gobbled my original post)

Hi all,

I am trying to configure nginx 0.6.32 to serve a customized
403.html error page, but it doesn’t appear to be working…
I am using “nginx -t” to check my config files, so I don’t think
it’s a configuration issue.

No matter how I try to shift things around in the config file,
nginx never seems to serve my custom 403.html page, but
instead always returns the built-in, hardcoded “403 Forbidden”
page (the one with the HR, and nginx version footer).

I have verified that the 403.html can be served by nginx (so I’m
pretty sure it’s not a path or permissions issue), and have also
tried to find relevant postings on the net… the closest match I
could find to my problem is:

… but I don’t have an upstream backend in this particular nginx
configuration, so I don’t think the re-writing response from Igor
applies to my problem.

Any ideas/pointers that may be of help? I have included all relevant
information I can think of at the bottom of this email

Many thanks in advance,

Peter

PS - I have also compiled my nginx instance with --with-debug
and am using the debug_connection directive to try to understand
what’s going on, but I must admit the log output is so verbose that
I’m struggling to get my head around it, even for a single HTTP
request … is there something specific I should be looking for?
or would it help if I post the entire debug output?

VERSION INFO

pvdb@jupiler ~ $ /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -V
nginx version: nginx/0.6.32
built by gcc 4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-51)
configure arguments: --with-http_dav_module --with-debug
pvdb@jupiler ~ $ _

NGINX CONFIG (http section)

http {

allow  192.168.1.0/24;
allow  127.0.0.1;
deny all;

...

}

NGINX CONFIG (server section)

server {

    ...

    error_page  403              /403.html;
    location = /403.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

    ...

}

FYI: I have tried various combinations/variants/locations
for the above snippets, but nothing seems to actually
serve my custom 403.html page

just add “allow all;” to your location.

location = /403.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
allow all;
}

hshh <hunreal@…> writes:

just add “allow all;” to your location.

location = /403.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
allow all;
}

Thx, hshh, that did the trick!!!

Best regards,

Peter