Forbidden : You don’t have the permission to access / on this server.
If you see this error message, then perhaps you’re trying to use an Apache virtual host that’s located somewhere in your home directory?
Well this could be because Apache doesn’t have the permissions to traverse the directory, and this post explains how to fix it with complete config files.
In my case, my default apache document root is /var/www and I want to server /var/www/potdigger which is a symlink to /home/david/workspace/php/potdigger_backend .
Find out what user the Apache process is using
david@dragdroid:~$ ps auxf |grep apache
david 23857 0.0 0.0 5304 856 pts/0 S+ 18:00 0:00 | \_ grep --color=auto apache
root 23381 0.0 0.0 5652 2628 ? Ss 17:25 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 23384 0.0 0.0 5424 1816 ? S 17:25 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 23386 0.0 0.0 227328 2820 ? Sl 17:25 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 23387 0.0 0.0 227208 2624 ? Sl 17:25 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
In my case (Ubuntu), the user is www-data. Note : Your process could be named httpd instead of apache.
Login with this user to see which directories causes problem.
david@dragdroid:~$ sudo -i -u www-data
[sudo] password for david:
$ ls /var/www/ -l
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 177 2011-06-29 15:30 index.html
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 43 2011-06-29 16:13 potdigger -> /home/david/workspace/php/potdigger_backend
$ cd potdigger
cd: 2: can't cd to potdigger
$ cd /home/david/workspace/php/potdigger_backend
cd: 3: can't cd to /home/david/workspace/php/potdigger_backend
$ cd /home/david/workspace/php
cd: 5: can't cd to /home/david/workspace/php
$ cd /home/david/workspace
cd: 6: can't cd to /home/david/workspace
$ cd /home/david
Now we see that we can get to /home/david without any problem. It’s the workspace/php/potdigger_backend path that it can’t access.
Set the executable permission on these directories.
david@dragdroid:~$ pwd
/home/david
david@dragdroid:~$ chmod a+x workspace workspace/php workspace/php/potdigger_backend
david@dragdroid:~$
Open a new terminal window (so that you use your logon user) and type :
Verify that it works
$ cd /home/david/workspace/php/potdigger_backend
$ pwd
/home/david/workspace/php/potdigger_backend
Use the first window (logged in as www_data) and type :
Reload the apache configuration, and boom!
david@dragdroid:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
[sudo] password for david:
* Reloading web server config apache2 apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName [ OK ]
david@dragdroid:~$
Here’s my vhost related config :
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName potdigger
DocumentRoot /var/www/potdigger
<Directory /var/www/potdigger>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/potdigger-error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/potdigger-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
[EDIT June 30th 2011] For Fedora / Red Hat users
When logging in using the apache user on my Fedora box, I would get a “This account is currently not available” error. So here’s what I did :
[david@H20 ~]$ cd $HOME
[david@H20 ~]$ pwd
/home/david
[david@H20 ~]$ ls -ld . workspace workspace/android workspace/android/intuitia workspace/android/intuitia/prototypes workspace/android/intuitia/prototypes/potdigger_backend workspace/android/intuitia/prototypes/potdigger_backend/trunk
drwx------. 78 david david 4096 Jun 30 16:38 .
drwx------ 5 david david 4096 May 5 12:42 workspace
drwxrwxr-x 23 david david 4096 Jun 27 05:43 workspace/android
drwxrwxr-x 4 david david 4096 May 27 10:57 workspace/android/intuitia
drwxrwxr-x 14 david david 4096 Jun 30 16:37 workspace/android/intuitia/prototypes
drwxrwxr-x 4 david david 4096 Jun 30 16:37 workspace/android/intuitia/prototypes/potdigger_backend
drwxrwxr-x 10 david david 4096 Jun 30 16:37 workspace/android/intuitia/prototypes/potdigger_backend/trunk
We can observe that /home/david (.) and /home/david/workspace directories lacks the executable bit.
[david@H20 ~]$ chmod a+x . workspace