Apache VirtualHost 403 Forbidden

125
votes

I recently tried to set a test server up with Apache. The site must run under domain www.mytest.com. I always get a 403 Forbidden error. I am on Ubuntu 10.10 server edition. The doc root is under dir /var/www. The following are my settings:

Content of /var/www

ls -l /var/www/

total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-08-04 11:26 mytest.com
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 177 2011-07-25 16:10 index.html

Content of the host file on the server (with IP 192.168.2.5)

cat /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost 
127.0.1.1 americano
192.168.2.5 americano.mytest.com www.mytest.com

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

Site config

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
ServerName www.mytest.com
ServerAlias mytest.com

DocumentRoot "/var/www/mytest.com"

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/mytest-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/mytest-access_log combined

#
# This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to.
#
<Directory "/var/www/mytest.com">
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None

Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

I have no .htaccess file in my doc root. The permissions are set correctly (readable by www-data).

If I type in the IP address from my desktop, the site shows up correctly. I changed the hosts file on my desktop to point www.mytest.com to the server's IP. When I use it, I get 403. Since many functions of this site are sitename-sensitive, I have to be able to access the site by the domain name.

Another funky thing is, even if all log files are created properly, they have no information regarding this error.

I am stuck. Can anybody help?

11
linuxapacheubuntuvirtualhosthttp-status-code-403
can you add the content of: sudo sh -c ". /etc/apache2/envvars; apache2 -S" (list of Virtualhosts) and: sudo sh -c ". /etc/apache2/envvars; grep -R Listen /etc/apache2/*|grep -v \"#\"; grep -R NameVirtual /etc/apache2/*|grep -v \"#\"" - regilero
The first command returns following: VirtualHost configuration: 192.168.2.5:* www.mytest.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mytest.com:1) Syntax OK The second one returns: /etc/apache2/ports.conf:Listen 80 /etc/apache2/ports.conf: Listen 443 /etc/apache2/ports.conf: Listen 443 /etc/apache2/conf.d/virtual.conf:NameVirtualHost * - Yuchen Wang
try on serverfault.com - regilero

11 Answers

302
votes

Apache 2.4.3 (or maybe slightly earlier) added a new security feature that often results in this error. You would also see a log message of the form "client denied by server configuration". The feature is requiring a user identity to access a directory. It is turned on by DEFAULT in the httpd.conf that ships with Apache. You can see the enabling of the feature with the directive

Require all denied

This basically says to deny access to all users. To fix this problem, either remove the denied directive (or much better) add the following directive to the directories you want to grant access to:

Require all granted

as in 

<Directory "your directory here">
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
   # New directive needed in Apache 2.4.3: 
   Require all granted
</Directory>
15
votes

For apache Ubuntu 2.4.7 , I finally found you need to white list your virtual host in apache2.conf

# access here, or in any related virtual host.
<Directory /home/gav/public_html/>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>
8
votes

This may be a permissions problem.

every single parent path to the virtual document root must be Readable, Writable, and Executable by the web server httpd user

according to this page about Apache 403 errors.

Since you're using Allow from all, your order shouldn't matter, but you might try switching it to Deny,Allow to set the default behavior to "allowing."

6
votes

Move the Directory clause out of the virtualhost, and put it before declaring the virtualhost.

Drove me nuts for a long time too. Don't know why. It's a Debian thing.

1
votes

I was having the same problem with a virtual host on Ubuntu 14.04

For me the following solution worked:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2185282

It's just adding a <Directory > tag to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

0
votes

If you did everything right, just give the permission home directory like:

sudo chmod o+x $HOME

then

sudo systemctl restart apache2
0
votes

The problem was that the file access permission was wrong.

I changed the permissions of the directory and it worked.

0
votes

I had this issue on Arch Linux too... it costs me some time but I'm happy now that I found my mistake:

My directory with the .html files where in my account.
I set everything on r+x but I still got the 403 error.
Than I went completely back and tried to set my home-directory to execute which solved my problem.

0
votes

It could be you haven't setup PHP~!

0
votes

This works on Linux Fedora for VirtualHost : ( Lampp/Xampp )

Go to : /opt/lampp/etc/extra

Open : httpd-vhosts.conf

Insert this in httpd-vhosts.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot "/opt/lampp/APPS/My_App"
ServerName votemo.test
ServerAlias www.votemo.test
ErrorLog "logs/votemo.test-error_log"
CustomLog "logs/votemo.test-access_log" common
<Directory "/opt/lampp/APPS/My_App">
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

p.s. : Don't forget to comment the previous exemple already present in httpd-vhosts.conf

Set your hosts system file :

Go to : /etc/ folder find hosts file ( /etc/hosts )

I insert this : (but not sure to 100% if this good)

127.0.0.1       votemo.test

::1         votemo.test

-> Open or Restart Apache.

Open a console and paste this command for open a XAMPP graphic interface :

sudo /opt/lampp/manager-linux-x64.run

Note : Adjust path how you want to your app folder

ex: DocumentRoot "/home/USER/Desktop/My_Project"

and set directory path too :

ex : ... <Directory "/home/USER/Desktop/My_Project"> ...

But this should be tested, comment if this work ...

Additionnal notes :

  • Localisation Lampp folder : (Path) /opt/lampp

  • Start Lampp : sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

  • Adjust rights if needed : sudo chmod o+w /opt/lampp/manager-linux-x64.run

  • Path to hosts file : /etc/hosts

-1
votes

I just spent several hours on this stupid problem

First, change permissions using this in terminal 

find htdocs -type f -exec chmod 664 {} + -o -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +

I don't know what the difference is between 664 and 775 I did both 775 like this Also htdocs needs the directory path for instance for me it was 

/usr/local/apache2/htdocs 

find htdocs -type f -exec chmod 775 {} + -o -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +

This is the other dumb thing too

make sure that your image src link is your domain name for instance 

src="http://www.fakedomain.com/images/photo.png"

Be sure to have 

EnableSendfile off in httpd.conf file
EnableMMAP off in httpd.conf file

You edit those using pico in terminal

I also created a directory for images specifically so that when you type in the browser address bar domainname.com/images, you will get a list of photos which can be downloaded and need to be downloaded successfully to indicate image files that are working properly 

<Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/images>
AddType images/png .png
</Directory>

And those are the solutions I have tried, now I have functioning images... yay!!!

Onto the next problem(s)