Apache virtual hosts not working (error 403)

Question

I have installed apache2, php and mysql server to my ubuntu 14.04 and was tested and everything is working as expected.

I have application created using codeigniter & was past developed on mac osx, so I create the following in order to run it on my ubuntu:

create new site configuration file inside sites-available named payroll-v1.conf like below:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName  payroll.v1
DocumentRoot /home/ahmed-saber/workspace/payroll-v1/

<Directory /home/ahmed-saber/workspace/payroll-v1/>
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory> 

</VirtualHost>

adding the line below to etc/hosts

127.0.0.1   payroll.v1

although my application not working and always output 403 forbidden even if i trying to access any static html page for test

Answer 1

The 403 error means that your pages are inaccessible for Apache.

Setting chmod -R 755 as you did, made it accessible for everybody on your system - every user, program, daemon etc. Furthermore, you have made all files executable this way (see this or this for mor info on permissions and executables on Linux).

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More secure, yet simple solution, will be adding yourself to Apache's group (in Ubuntu its www-data) and then changing your Apache workspace to this group:

sudo adduser ahmed-saber www-data
sudo chown .www-data /home/ahmed-saber/workspace/
chmod 750 /home/ahmed-saber/workspace/

For more secure approach you could use Access Control List, which might be a little more complicated.

In situations like this, you can always check Apache's error log (/var/log/apache2/error.log). If you are developing web pages you can keep one terminal window opened with "live view" of logs (error.log or access.log or whatever), like this:

tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

Answer 2

You need to add a line

ServerName  payroll.v1

inside your VirtualHost definition to tell Apache the hostname used for this VirtualHost.

Answer 3

The issue solved by running the following

sudo chmod -R 755 /home/ahmed-saber/workspace/*

also blank page due to some php errors