Member Avatar for Octet

Ok, so I have just set up a server using Ubuntu Server 12.04 but I have hit a bit of a brick wall when attempting to view webpages.
I chown'ed the /var/www folder so I could add my files to it and all is working fine from this front but it comes to when I try and display the webpage. My server doesn't seem to like accessing the folders for example in my main folder (/var/www) I have the index and then three other folders, StyleSheets, Resources, and Pages.

When accessing the website, the index.php page displays as if it doesn't have a stylesheet attached to it and when attempting to access one of the folders or pages using I get a 403 Forbidden which if I am not mistaken means that there isn't the appropriate permissions for Apache to view them.

How would I be able to allow Apache access to all the folders?
Thank you

Edited by Octet
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by here2serve

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As described, Apache is serving the index but linked assets and subfolders return 403 (forbidden). and correctly pointed at ownership/recursion as a common root cause. Ownership is one piece of the puzzle; other frequent causes include missing execute bits on directories, Apache directory access directives (different between Apache 2.2 and 2.4), .htaccess denies, AppArmor profile blocks on Ubuntu, and simple path/case mismatches that make CSS links fail.

Useful diagnostic commands (examples):

ls -ld /var/www /var/www/Pages
stat -c '%U:%G %a %n' /var/www/Pages/Login.php

Set safe, standard permissions (directories need the execute bit; files must be readable):

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

To avoid changing ownership every time, make the developer account a member of Apache’s group:

sudo usermod -aG www-data <username>
# then re-login the shell session for group changes to take effect

Apache config and .htaccess: a Directory block without the proper allow directive will cause 403. Example syntax for both Apache versions:

# Apache 2.4
<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

# Apache 2.2
<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Check logs, AppArmor and HTTP headers:

tail -n 50 /var/log/apache2/error.log
curl -I http://192.168.0.11/StyleSheets/style.css
sudo aa-status
sudo service apache2 restart

Look for "permission denied" messages in the error log or AppArmor denials; confirm the browser’s network inspector shows 403 vs 404 (case-sensitive filenames on Linux are a common gotcha). Avoid world-writable permissions (0777); prefer group-based access and minimal privileges. These combined checks usually surface the exact cause when ownership alone does not.

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Member Avatar for Shinedevil

Make sure that your chown command has the -R flag for recursive, otherwise it's not going to be able to work.

Member Avatar for here2serve

chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/
<SNIPPED URL>

Edited by peter_budo because: Selfpromotion
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