Apache Error Client Denied By Server Configuration

Q. I'm running Apache 2 Web sever under CentOS Linux and getting an error that read as follows:

[Wed Sep 17 21:53:49 2008] [error] [client 122.1xx.y9.zzz] client denied by server configuration: /var/www/examples.com/

How do I fix this error?

A. By default Apache is configured as restrictive server. It will not allow end users (client) to do anything on default DocumentRoot. To fix this issue you need to add following lines to your VirtualHost configuration directives:

<Directory "/var/www/example.com">
    Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

'Order allow,deny' and 'Allow from all' will set appropriate permission for the directory. At the end it should look like as follows:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
        DocumentRoot "/var/www/example.com"
        ServerName example.com
        ServerAlias www.example.com
        ErrorLog "/var/logs/httpd/example.com/error.log"
        CustomLog "/var/logs/httpd/example.com/access.log" common
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/suexec/example.com/cgi-bin/"
 
<Directory "/var/www/example.com">
	Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks
	AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
	Order allow,deny
	Allow from all
</Directory>
 
  SuExecUserGroup user group
</VirtualHost>

Restart apache:
# service httpd restart

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