I get Access Forbidden Error 403 when setting up new alias

Question

I m running windows 7 and recently installed XAMPP to build a dev environment  I m not great with the server side of things so I m having some problems setting up an alias for a project   So far XAMPP is running and if I go to localhost I get the XAMPP welcome page  I created an  alias  folder in my  conf  folder of my apache install  In there I added dev conf with the following content    lt Directory  C  Users my user My 20Documents Aptana 20Studio 203 20Workspace project  gt      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI     AllowOverride All     Order allow deny     Allow from 127 0 0 1  lt  Directory gt   Alias  dev  C  Users my user My 20Documents Aptana 20Studio 203 20Workspace project    But then when I go to  localhost dev  I get      Access forbidden       You don t have permission to access the requested object  It is either   read-protected or not readable by the server       If you think this is a server error  please contact the webmaster       Error 403   I tried googling and I found other similar questions on SO but I can t seem to figure it out  Some say that you have to tell it to have permissions but in my conf file I specified to allow it from 127 0 0 1  Maybe this is because my path has spaces in it  though some googling told me  20 work   I had managed to create one to a different folder and copy pasted the working one and changed the alias and path and it broke so it this tells me it probably has something to do with either   I looked in my log folder and found the following line       Tue Dec 13 14 59 20 2011   error   client   1  client denied by   server configuration  C  Users my user My 20Documents   I m not sure if it cuts because error messages can only be of a certain length but that s definitely not the path I added in the dev conf file  I m hoping this can make this a bit clearer for some because I am getting pretty frustrated and I m not sure what to try anymore

User · Accepted Answer

I finally got it to work   I m not sure if the spaces in the path were breaking things but I changed the workspace of my Aptana installation to something without spaces   Then I uninstalled XAMPP and reinstalled it because I was thinking maybe I made a typo somewhere without noticing and figured I should be working from scratch   Turns out Windows 7 has a service somewhere that uses port 80 which blocks apache from starting  giving it the -1  error  So I changed the port it listens to port 8080  no more conflict   Finally I restarted my computer  for some reason XAMPP doesn t like me messing with ini files and just restarting apache wasn t doing the trick   Anyway  this has been the most frustrating day ever so I really hope my answer ends up helping someone out

User · Answer

This question is old and although you managed to make it work but I feel it would be helpful if I make clear some of points you have raised here   First about directory name having spaces  I have been playing with apache2 configuration files and I have discovered that  if the directory name has space then enclose it in double quotes and all problems disappear  For example         NameVirtualHost     local webapp org      lt VirtualHost local webapp org 80 gt          ServerAdmin admin example com         DocumentRoot  E  Project my php webapp          ServerName local webapp org      lt  VirtualHost gt    Note the way DocumentRoot line is written   Second is about Access forbidden from xampp  I found that default xampp configuration    path to xampp apache httpd conf  has a section that looks like the following        lt Directory gt          AllowOverride none         Require all denied      lt  Directory gt    Change it and make it look like below  Save the file restart apache from xampp and that solves the problem        lt Directory gt         Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI        AllowOverride none        Require all granted      lt  Directory gt

User · Answer

try this      sudo chmod -R 0777  opt lampp htdocs testproject

User · Answer

I m using XAMPP with Apache2 4  I had this same issue  I wanted to leave the default xampp htdocs folder in place  be able to access it from locahost and have a Virtual Host to point to my dev area     The full contents of my C  xampp apache conf extra http-vhosts conf file is below       Virtual Hosts     Required modules  mod log config    If you want to maintain multiple domains hostnames on your   machine you can setup VirtualHost containers for them  Most configurations   use only name-based virtual hosts so the server doesn t need to worry about   IP addresses  This is indicated by the asterisks in the directives below      Please see the documentation at     lt URL http   httpd apache org docs 2 4 vhosts  gt    for further details before you try to setup virtual hosts      You may use the command line option  -S  to verify your virtual host   configuration       Use name-based virtual hosting       NameVirtualHost   80      VirtualHost example    Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container    The first VirtualHost section is used for all requests that do not   match a   ServerName or   ServerAlias in any  lt VirtualHost gt  block       lt VirtualHost   80 gt        ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host example com       DocumentRoot  C  xampp htdocs dummy-host example com        ServerName dummy-host example com       ServerAlias www dummy-host example com       ErrorLog  logs dummy-host example com-error log        CustomLog  logs dummy-host example com-access log  common    lt  VirtualHost gt      lt VirtualHost   80 gt        ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host2 example com       DocumentRoot  C  xampp htdocs dummy-host2 example com        ServerName dummy-host2 example com       ErrorLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-error log        CustomLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-access log  common    lt  VirtualHost gt     lt VirtualHost   80 gt      DocumentRoot  C  xampp htdocs      ServerName localhost  lt  VirtualHost gt     lt VirtualHost   80 gt      DocumentRoot  C  nick static      ServerName dev middleweek co uk      lt Directory  C  nick static  gt          Allow from all         Require all granted      lt  Directory gt   lt  VirtualHost gt    I then updated my C  windows System32 drivers etc hosts file like this       Copyright  c  1993-2009 Microsoft Corp      This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP IP for Windows      This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names  Each   entry should be kept on an individual line  The IP address should   be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name    The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one   space      Additionally  comments  such as these  may be inserted on individual   lines or following the machine name denoted by a     symbol      For example           102 54 94 97     rhino acme com            source server         38 25 63 10     x acme com                x client host    localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself      127 0 0 1       localhost       1             localhost  127 0 0 1   dev middleweek co uk 127 0 0 1       localhost   Restart your machine for good measure  open the XAMPP Control Panel and start Apache   Now open your custom domain in your browser  in the above example  it ll be http   dev middleweek co uk  Hope that helps someone   And if you want to be able to view directory listings under your new Virtual host  then edit your VirtualHost block in C  xampp apache conf extra http-vhosts conf to include  Options Indexes  like this      lt VirtualHost   80 gt      DocumentRoot  C  nick static      ServerName dev middleweek co uk      lt Directory  C  nick static  gt          Allow from all         Require all granted         Options Indexes      lt  Directory gt   lt  VirtualHost gt    Cheers  Nick

User · Answer

If you have installed a module on Xampp  on Linux  via Bitnami and changed chown settings  make sure that the  opt lampp apps  lt app gt  htdocs and tmp usergroup is daemon with all other sibling files and folders chowned to the user you installed as  e g  cd  opt lampp apps  lt app gt   sudo chown -R root root    followed by sudo chown -R root daemon htdocs tmp

User · Answer

I just found the same issue with Aliases on a Windows install of Xampp   To solve the 403 error    lt Directory  C  Your Directory With No Trailing Slash  gt     Require all granted  lt  Directory gt   Alias  dev  C  Your Directory With No Trailing Slash    The default Xampp set up should be fine with just this  Some people have experienced issues with a deny placed on the root directory so flipping out the directory tag to    lt Directory  C  Your Directory With No Trailing Slash  gt     Allow from all    Require all granted  lt  Directory gt    Would help with this but the current version of Xampp  v1 8 1 at the time of writing  doesn t require it   As for op s issue with port 80 Xampp includes a handy Netstat button to discover what s using your ports  Fire that off and fix the conflict  I imagine it could have been IIS but can t be sure

User · Answer

Apache 2 4 virtual hosts hack  1 In http conf specify the ports   below    Listen     Listen 80 Listen 4000 Listen 7000 Listen 9000    In  httpd-vhosts conf    lt VirtualHost   80 gt  ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host2 example com DocumentRoot  C  Users Vikas Documents NetBeansProjects slider website hitesh public html    ServerName hitesh web dev ErrorLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-error log  CustomLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-access log  common   lt Directory  C  Users Vikas Documents NetBeansProjects slider website hitesh public html  gt  Allow from all Require all granted  lt  Directory gt    lt  VirtualHost gt    this is 2nd virtual host   lt VirtualHost   80 gt  ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host2 example com DocumentRoot  E  dabkick git DabKickWebsite  ServerName  www my mobile dev ErrorLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-error log  CustomLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-access log  common   lt Directory  E  dabkick git DabKickWebsite  gt   Allow from all  Require all granted   lt  Directory gt   lt  VirtualHost gt   In hosts ics file of windows os    C  Windows System32 drivers etc host ics     127 0 0 1             localhost 127 0 0 1             hitesh web dev 127 0 0 1             www my mobile dev 127 0 0 1             demo multisite dev    4 now type your    domain names    in the browser it will ping the particular folder specified in the documentRoot path  5 if you want to access those files in a particular port then replace 80 in httpd-vhosts conf with port numbers like below and restart apache      lt VirtualHost   4000 gt  ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host2 example com DocumentRoot  C  Users Vikas Documents NetBeansProjects slider website hitesh public html  ServerName hitesh web dev ErrorLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-error log  CustomLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-access log  common   lt Directory  C  Users Vikas Documents NetBeansProjects slider website hitesh public html  gt  Allow from all Require all granted  lt  Directory gt    lt  VirtualHost gt    this is the 2nd vhost   lt VirtualHost   7000 gt  ServerAdmin webmaster dummy-host2 example com DocumentRoot  E  dabkick git DabKickWebsite  ServerName  www dabkick mobile dev ErrorLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-error log  CustomLog  logs dummy-host2 example com-access log  common   lt Directory  E  dabkick git DabKickWebsite  gt  Allow from all Require all granted  lt  Directory gt   lt  VirtualHost gt    Note  for port number given virtual hosts you have to ping in browser like    http   hitesh web dev 4000     or       http   www dabkick mobile dev 7000      6 After doing all those changes you have to save the files and restart apache respectively

[xampp] I get Access Forbidden (Error 403) when setting up new alias

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