Plesk shows 403 Forbidden on Linux: sw-engine-fpm: WARNING: Nothing matches the include pattern

Symptoms

• When opening Plesk in a web-browser, the following error is shown:

  PLESK_INFO: 403 Forbidden

• The sw-engine service cannot be started with the following error message:

  # service sw-engine start
  Starting sw-engine-fpm: WARNING: Nothing matches the include pattern ‘/etc/sw-engine/pool.d/*.conf’ from /etc/sw-engine/sw-engine-fpm.conf at line 6.
  ERROR: No pool defined. at least one pool section must be specified in config file
  ERROR: failed to post process the configuration
  ERROR: FPM initialization failed
  [FAILED]

Cause

Plesk packages are not installed properly or removed.

Resolution

Connect to the Plesk server via SSH and run Plesk Installer in a command-line interface to complete the installation.

If no packages are marked for installation (*) or the issue persists after installing them, recreate the Plesk file manually:

1. Create the plesk.conf file:

   # touch /etc/sw-engine/pool.d/plesk.conf

2. Open the created file in a text editor. In this example, we are using the vi editor:

   [plesk]
    user = psaadm
    group = psaadm
    
    listen = /var/run/sw-engine.sock
    listen.owner = sw-cp-server
    listen.group = root
    listen.mode = 0600
    
    pm = ondemand
    pm.start_servers = 0
    ;pm.min_spare_servers = 2
    ;pm.max_spare_servers = 8
    pm.max_children = 26
    pm.process_idle_timeout = 30s
    ;pm.max_requests = 10
    
    ;slowlog = /var/log/sw-cp-server/slow.log
    ;request_slowlog_timeout = 10s
    ;catch_workers_output = yes
    request_terminate_timeout = 600s
    
    security.limit_extensions = .php .php3
    
    env[PATH] = /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
    
    php_value[auto_prepend_file] = auth.php
    php_value[error_log] = /var/log/plesk/panel.log

3. Save the changes and close the file.

4. Start the sw-engine service:

   # service sw-engine start