Apache "Forbidden" Error after Leopard Upgrade

Choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu, enter ~/Sites/ as the folder's location, and change the permissions on this folder so that all accounts have Read access to everything inside.

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Thats not the solution... the problem is that the config file that Apache needs for each user account was deleted when it was upgraded and not re-generated. I've got a post here that explains how to fix it.

Jason

In an attempt to get this working in my Leopard install, I mistakenly deleted /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. There is one under /etc/apache2/originals and I tried using that but it does not work. Can someone reply to this thread with the contents of /etc/apache2/httpd.conf? Thanks!!!

I finally got my Leopard Apache configuration working with PHP5 and with MySQL. I also solved (finally) the forbidden errors I was seeing. Here are some of the changes I made.

1. My read permissions on my website files and directories were configured correctly so I suspected that something inside my httpd.conf file was amiss. Inside /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, I commented out two lines in the <Directory> block. This fixed the "forbidden" messages I was seeing for my virtual hosts. See below:
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
# Order deny,allow
# Deny from all
</Directory>

2. I used the system.log in Console to detect and fix httpd.conf syntax errors. If you have syntax errors in any of your httpd.conf files, apache2 under Leopard will not start.

3. I removed the comment character from the start of the line below inside httpd.conf:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

I am now back to where I was with Tiger.

jkwuc89 has the ticket to getting ~user/Sites/ to work... although I had to use root to get permissions to edit the file. Not sure what the security implications of changing the deny,allow params. are however.

My MacBook Pro where Apache is running is always behind some kind of firewall and therefore, it is not publicly accessible. So, I am reasonably comfortable with opening up the access the way that I did.

You may want to leave the root protection in place.
I fixed the issue myself by making a similar change to the user dir config file.
You could add the following lines to the end of the /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf file.

<Directory /Users/*/Sites>
Order Deny,Allow
Allow from all
</Directory>

Thank you mlhnet! I was having trouble accessing any of my virtual hosts (getting 403) after moving my server to 10.5/2.2.6, but your tip solved the issue.

I found that this was configured properly, but the file system permissions on ~username were set to prevent access. I had to change this to allow "Everyone" read-only access. This is probably not the best thing to do, but suggestions are welcome.

Interesting, Leopard made my ~username read-only for 'Everyone' from the beginning.

I too was having those 403 errors. I followed peoples' directions:
- I enabled PHP in the httpd.conf file
- I created a new file in apache2/users/shortusername.conf with the following contents:
<Directory "/Users/shortusername/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
However, I now get a "Cannot connect to server" whenever I try to navigate to http://localhost/~shortusername/. I can still navigate to http://localhost/ and get the generic Apache page, though. Anyone have any idea as to what's up?

Thanks

Open the Console application and see if you're getting an error message. Also, check the error log as specified in your httpd.conf file.

There are a couple of errors that appear in Console. They appear continuously as long as Web Sharing is active:

11/27/07 4:43:05 PM org.apache.httpd[217] httpd: Syntax error on line 455 of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 15 of /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf: Syntax error on line 1 of /private/etc/apache2/users/shortusername.conf: /private/etc/apache2/users/shortusername.conf:1: <Directory> was not closed.

Then afterwards:

11/27/07 4:43:47 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.apache.httpd[221]) Exited with exit code: 1

Then:

11/27/07 4:43:47 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.apache.httpd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 9 seconds

Then it repeats. It would seem that it doesn't like something in the shortusername.conf file. Again, what I posted above is all that I have in there - do I need any headers or any specific kind of formatting for that file?

The apache error log is rather lengthy - would it help for me to post it, or will these errors be enough?