neutrino38's Journal: Apache 2, Fedora Core, symbolink links and 403 Forbidden

While setup a web access to a directory outside the document root, I encountered a 403 Forbidden error. In error_log, this gives

  Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible:

This error message occurs in several situation. There are no tool to troubleshoot them apart manual inspection.

1. If you are running SElinux, make sure that SElinux configuration allows httpd to access the targetted directory.

You can check /var/log/messages about SElinux access violations and or temporary disable SElinux using /usr/sbin/setenforce 0 to discriminate the case.

2. Check that the sym link is sitting in a directory or a subdirectory that has FollowSymlinks option enabled in httpd.conf

3. Check whether any directory directive would restrict this option using -FollowSymLink. Check this in httpd.conf and all included files.

4. Last but not least, check that your targed directory and files is accessible to user apache. THIS MEANS THAT any parent directory of the target should have the proper permissions. Most probably, read and execute for the whole world.