Apache 403 Forbidden Error and Solution
Q. I have successfully configured Apache web server for my client. But why does my clients website just say "Error 403 Forbidden"? For example when client send request http://myclient.com/something/ Apache generate a 403 error. How do I troubleshoot this problem?
A. Error code start 4xx is generated because of client browser request. A 403 error code means client browser (or person who is trying to access your site) cannot access the requested URL. It can be caused by many reason
a) A 403 status code indicates that the client cannot access the requested resource. It means the wrong username and password were sent in the request, or that the permissions on the server do not allow what was being asked.
b) No default directory index page is present. Upload Index.html or Index.htm file. Directive DirectoryIndex defines the default index page name. Open your apache configuration file, find out default index file name, and upload the same file to directory:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml
c) Make sure the CGI script requested have executable permissions set on files. Use chmod command to set permission:
$ chmod +x file.cgi
d) Make sure you have permission to use .htaccess file for Apache web server. If Apache has overrides, disabled you will bump back with a 403 error.
Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter or RSS feed to get all updates.
You can Email this page to a friend.
Related Other Helpful FAQs:
- Forbidden - You don’t have permission to access this page error and solution
- Apache Tomcat: Please increase maxThreads error and solution
- Apache Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to port 80 or 443 error and solution
- How do I find out syntax errors in my Apache web server configuration file?
- Apache Log Files
Discussion on This FAQ
Leave a Reply
We encourage your comments, and suggestions. But please stay on topic, be polite, and avoid spam. Thank you very much for stopping by our site!
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:30 am
I had the same problem. I was doing some testing and have installed PHP 5 on a development server. I had a site installed on the server that was working correctly, complete with quite an elaborate .htaccess file handling many redirects and rules. However, after installing PHP5 it turns out any php file I tried to view just returned a 403 Forbidden error. I began to scratch my head. Searching on Google didn’t immediately bring up a solution either. However, I eventually narrowed it down to the fact that I needed to add Options +FollowSymLinks to my .htaccess file. That solved it all.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:13 am
#chmod a+x /home-dir-where-apache-installed
ex: chmod a+x /home/test
This will fix the problem