sudo -u debian-tor nyx

That's it!
Thanks a lot!

That's not great for security, now nyx can read your tor private keys.
(It probably won't, but still…)

If you add your controller to the debian-tor group, and set the
appropriate options to make your cookie file group-readable,
then nyx can only read those files.

I'm not sure why that isn't working for you.

Does your torrc-defaults or torrc contain:
CookieAuthFileGroupReadable 1

If using a control socket:
ControlPort unix:/path/to/file GroupWritable
ControlPortFileGroupReadable 1

And maybe:
DataDirectoryGroupReadable 1

T