Fixing 403 Forbidden on alias directory with Apache

Question

I am trying to setup an alias to point to some directory on my filesystem not in DocumentRoot. Now I get a 403 Forbidden response. These are the steps taken: 1. edit http.co

Answer 1

I was having this issue on OS X too. It turned out gliptak was right, but I've some more detail to add.

We're both attempting to configure a virtual directory for a folder under a user's home folder; I think this is why we're having the problem. In my case, I had the following setup:

• Home folder is /Users/calrion.
• Virtual directory folder is /Users/calrion/Path/to/www.
• There's a symlink /Users/calrion/Path pointing to /Volumes/Other/Users/calrion/Path.

The problem was the user and group _www (which Apache runs as on OS X) lacked execute access to /Users/calrion and /Volumes/Other/Users/calrion.

Running chmod o+x /Users/calrion and chmod o+x /Volumes/Other/Users/calrion resolved the issue (on OS X 10.7.4).

The rule here is that Apache requires execute access to all folders in the path in order to serve files. Without this, you'll get a HTTP 403 (forbidden).

Answer 2

SELinux was the culprit for me. If you're having this issue on a linux box and your alias and file permissions are correct than try doing a "setenforce 0" to put SELinux into permissive mode. That did the trick for me.

Answer 3

Check permission on /Users/user/Documents/, /Users/user/ (higher level permissions are enforced first ...)

/bin/su into the user running Apache (like www, www-data) and cat a file in the /Users/user/Documents/example directory. That might point you to permission problems with your setup.

Answer 4

Quick Solution:

Use these commands as root on Linux:

find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Answer 5

These are all very good answers. None of them worked for me.

I have an alias specified in OSX server pointing to a user directory. I spent a long while chmodding and messing with _www user, adding executable permissions recursively, uninstalling macports and all sorts of stuff trying to get this to work. I tried 777. Nope. No idea why it wasn't working.

Eventually, I just checked the "shared folder" checkbox in the Finder for that folder, and it worked, on the specified domain, with php active, the way I wanted it to. :/ ...so that was easy.

Answer 6

The last straw ;) Required local in the Directory Entry...

like

<Directory "/Users/user/Documents/example">
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
   AllowOverride All
   Require local
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
</Directory>

if everything else doesn't work (correct Alias, Directory Entry in httpd.conf and correct mod/usr/grp).

keep in mind: if you put your site in user-space the apache user (running httpd) needs access to your home!