Apache giving 403 forbidden errors

Question

Ok  so i ve previously set up two virtual hosts and they are working cool  they both house simple web projects and work fine with http   project1 and http   project2 in the browser   Anyway  I ve come to add another vhost  I edited the  etc hosts file with 127 0 0 1 project3 and also updated the httpd-vhosts conf file by copy and pasting the previous entries for project2 and editing the file path    I ve checked all the file and folder permissions  in fact I copied and pasted from project2  and simply put a  hello world  message in the index php file   I get a 403 forbidden permission denied message when accessing http   project3  Why is this  I just can figure out what step I ve missed as everything seems to be set up correct

User · Answer

In my case it was failing as the IP of my source server was not whitelisted in the target server.

For e.g. I was trying to access https://prodcat.ref.test.co.uk from application running on my source server. On source server find IP by ifconfig

This IP should be whitelisted in the target Server's apache config file. If its not then get it whitelist.

Steps to add a IP for whitelisting (if you control the target server as well) ssh to the apache server sudo su - cd /usr/local/apache/conf/extra (actual directories can be different based on your config)

Find the config file for the target application for e.g. prodcat-443.conf

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} <YOUR Server's IP> 
for e.g.
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^192\.68\.2\.98

Hope this helps someone

User · Answer

I just fixed this issue after struggling for a few days  Here s what worked for me   First  check your Apache error log file and look at the most recent error message    If it says something like   access to  mySite denied  filesystem path   Users myusername Sites mySite   because search permissions are missing on a component of the path   then there is a problem with your file permissions  You can fix them by running these commands from the terminal     cd  Users myusername Sites mySite   find   -type f -exec chmod 644         find   -type d -exec chmod 755         Then  refresh the URL where your website should be  such as http   localhost mySite   If you re still getting a 403 error  and if your Apache error log still says the same thing  then progressively move up your directory tree  adjusting the directory permissions as you go  You can do this from the terminal by     cd      chmod 755 mySite   If necessary  continue with     cd      chmod Sites    and  if necessary     cd      chmod myusername   DO NOT go up farther than that  You could royally mess up your system  If you still get the error that says search permissions are missing on a component of the path  I don t know what you should do  However  I encountered a different error  the one below  which I fixed as follows  If your error log says something like   client denied by server configuration   Users myusername Sites mySite   then your problem is not with your file permissions  but instead with your Apache configuration   Notice that in your httpd conf file  you will see a default configuration like this  Apache 2 4      lt Directory   gt      AllowOverride none     Require all denied  lt  Directory gt    or like this  Apache 2 2     lt Directory   gt    Order deny allow   Deny from all  lt  Directory gt    DO NOT change this  We will not override these permissions globally  but instead in your httpd-vhosts conf file  First  however  make sure that your vhost Include line in httpd conf is uncommented  It should look like this   Your exact path may be different      Virtual hosts Include etc extra httpd-vhosts conf   Now  open the httpd-vhosts conf file that you just Included  Add an entry for your webpage if you don t already have one  It should look something like this  The DocumentRoot and Directory paths should be identical  and should point to wherever your index html or index php file is located  For me  that s within the public subdirectory   For Apache 2 2    lt VirtualHost   80 gt        ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host2 example com     DocumentRoot   Users myusername Sites mySite public      ServerName mysite       ErrorLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-error log        CustomLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-access log  common      lt Directory   Users myusername Sites mySite public  gt          Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI         AllowOverride All         Order allow deny         Allow from all         Require all granted      lt  Directory gt   lt  VirtualHost gt    The lines saying  AllowOverride All Require all granted   are critical for Apache 2 4   Without these  you will not be overriding the default Apache settings specified in httpd conf  Note that if you are using Apache 2 2  these lines should instead say  Order allow deny Allow from all   This change has been a major source of confusion for googlers of this problem  such as I  because copy-pasting these Apache 2 2 lines will not work in Apache 2 4   and the Apache 2 2 lines are still commonly found on older help threads   Once you have saved your changes  restart Apache  The command for this will depend on your OS and installation  so google that separately if you need help with it    I hope this helps someone else     PS  If you are having trouble finding these  conf files  try running the find command  such as     find   -name httpd conf

User · Answer

restorecon command works as below    restorecon -v -R  var www html

User · Answer

Check that     Apache can physically access the file  the user that run apache  probably www-data or apache  can access the file in the filesystem  Apache can list the content of the folder  read permission  Apache has a  Allow  directive for that folder  There should be one for  var www   you can check default vhost for example    Additionally  you can look at the error log file  usually located at  var log apache2 error log  which will describe why you get the 403 error exactly   Finally  you may want to restart apache  just to be sure all that configuration is applied  This can be generally done with  etc init d apache2 restart  On some system  the script will be called httpd  Just figure out

User · Answer

Notice that another issue that might be causing this is that  the  quot FollowSymLinks quot  option of a parent directory might have been mistakenly overwritten by the options of your project s directory  This was the case for me and made me pull my hair until I found out the cause  Here s an example of such a mistake   lt Directory   gt          Options FollowSymLinks         AllowOverride all         Require all denied  lt  Directory gt    lt Directory  var www  gt          Options Indexes    lt --- NOT OK  It s overwriting the above option of the  quot   quot  directory          AllowOverride all         Require all granted  lt  Directory gt   So now if you check the Apache s log message tail -n 50 -f  var www html  the error log file of your site   you ll see such an error  Options FollowSymLinks and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch are both off  so the RewriteRule directive is also forbidden due to its similar ability to circumvent directory restrictions  That s because Indexes in the above rules for  var www directory is overwriting the FolowSymLinks of the   directory  So now that you know the cause  in order to fix it  you can do many things depending on your need  For instance   lt Directory   gt          Options FollowSymLinks         AllowOverride all         Require all denied  lt  Directory gt    lt Directory  var www  gt          Options FollowSymLinks Indexes    lt --- OK          AllowOverride all         Require all granted  lt  Directory gt   Or even this   lt Directory   gt          Options FollowSymLinks         AllowOverride all         Require all denied  lt  Directory gt    lt Directory  var www  gt          Options -Indexes    lt --- OK as well  It will NOT cause an overwrite          AllowOverride all         Require all granted  lt  Directory gt   The example above will not cause the overwrite issue  because in Apache  if an option is  quot   quot  it will overwrite the  quot   quot s only  and if it s a  quot - quot   it will overwrite the  quot - quot s     Don t ask me for a reference on that though  it s just my interpretation of an Apache s error message checked through journalctl -xe  which says  Either all Options must start with   or -  or no Option may  when an option has a sign  but another one doesn t E g   FollowSymLinks -Indexes   So it s my personal conclusion -thus should be taken with a grain of salt- that if I ve used -Indexes as the option  that will be considered as a whole distinct set of options by the Apache from the other option in the  quot   quot  which doesn t have any signs on it  and so no annoying rewrites will occur in the end  which I could successfully confirm by the above rules in a project directory of my own   Hope that this will help you pull much less of your hair

User · Answer

The server may need read permission for your home directory and  htaccess therein

User · Answer

it doesn t  however  solve the problem  because on e g  open SUSE Tumbleweed  custom   source build is triggering the same 401 error on default web page  which is configured accordingly with Indexes and Require all granted

User · Answer

You can try disabling selinux and try once again using the following command  setenforce 0

[html] Apache giving 403 forbidden errors

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