How To Move an Nginx Web Root to a New Location on Ubuntu 18.04?

Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Ubuntu 18.04 is no longer supported, so this guide now uses Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Move a site's files to another location, for example a larger disk mounted at /data, and point Nginx to it.

Steps

1. Copy the files, keeping owners and permissions:

   rsync -a /var/www/example.com/ /data/www/example.com/

2. Change the root line in the site's server block to /data/www/example.com.
3. Test and reload: nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx.
4. Check the site, then remove the old copy.

Note: Every folder in the new path must be readable by the Nginx user. On AlmaLinux 9 / Rocky Linux 9 also set the SELinux label: semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "/data/www(/.*)?" && restorecon -R /data/www.