Apache: You don't have permission to access the requested directory

Written by
Date: 2012-06-10 10:10:43 00:00


I usually get this error when creating a new virtual site on Apache:

"You don't have permission to access the requested directory"

That usually is because of Deny from all or the no existence of the Allow from all directive in the folder I'm working on.

Suppose you have this <VirtualHost> configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin me@myserver
    DocumentRoot /srv/http/example/
    ServerName www.example.com
    ServerAlias example.com *.example.com
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteOptions inherit
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/example.com.log combined
</VirtualHost>

You need to have something like this inside <VirtualHost> tags.

<Directory /srv/http/example/>
Options +FollowSymLinks Indexes
AllowOverride All
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

So the whole configuration should see like this:

    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin me@myserver
        DocumentRoot /srv/http/example/
        ServerName www.example.com
        ServerAlias example.com *.example.com
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteOptions inherit
        CustomLog /var/log/apache2/example.com.log combined
        <Directory /srv/http/example/>
	        Options +FollowSymLinks Indexes
	        AllowOverride All
	        order allow,deny
	        allow from all
        </Directory>
    </VirtualHost>

Hope this helps you.