Issues Running a Second Meilisearch Instance on Debian – Permission Denied (os error 13)

Discussion in 'Server Operation' started by vaio1, Oct 5, 2025.

  1. vaio1

    vaio1 Member

    Hi everyone,

    I’m trying to set up a staging instance of Meilisearch on the same Debian server where the production instance is running. The setup is almost identical, but I’m running into a Permission denied (os error 13) error when I start the staging instance as a non-root user.

    Here’s what I’ve done so far:
    • Production instance:
      • User: meilisearch
      • DB path: /var/lib/meilisearch/data
      • HTTP port: 7700
    • Staging instance:
      • User: meilisearch (tried root as well)
      • DB path: /var/lib/meilisearch/staging_data
      • HTTP port: 7701
      • .toml configured with db_path, http_addr, and log_level = "DEBUG"

    • Log file: redirected via systemd to /var/log/meilisearch-staging.log
    When I run the binary manually as meilisearch, I get:

    Error: Permission denied (os error 13)
    Running as root works fine, but I’d like to avoid running Meilisearch as root if possible.



    I’ve checked:

    • Permissions on /usr/local/bin/meilisearch, /var/lib/meilisearch/staging_data, and the log file
    • AppArmor profiles (apparmor is loaded, no profiles blocking the binary)
    • Using a different port (7701) for staging
    Has anyone encountered this issue when trying to run multiple instances of Meilisearch on the same server? Is there a recommended way to run a staging instance safely without root privileges?
     

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