Apache permission errors on OS X

June 22, 2006 1:55 PM

Apache on OS X is giving me some trouble. It's been working fine for years on previous Macs, but now I can't load my own user account site folder (/~username/) on my Intel iMac, which arrived last week -- I'm getting a 403.

When I load the site (computername.local/~username/) in a browser, I get the 403 page; meanwhile, the error message in the log (/var/log/httpd/error_log) reads as follows:

[Thu Jun 22 15:08:55 2006] [error] [client 10.0.1.3] (13)Permission denied: access to /~username failed because search permissions are missing on a component of the path

As a test, I created another user account. Its (blank) site folder loaded normally.

I've fiddled with httpd.conf before (only to get PHP operational), and I know a tiny tiny bit about .htaccess files, but for the life of me I don't know where the problem is. The httpd.conf and user.conf files do not appear out of whack. (Though what do I know?) Any insights?

For what it's worth, I've run into one or two other problems that I'm guessing have something to do with bringing the data over from the old machine (I had to do some of it manually; Setup Assistant failed on the user data). I have no idea whether that's relevant.

posted by mcwetboy to computers & internet (2 comments total)

Do a Get Info on your home folder and the Sites subfolder of your home folder. Make sure anyone ("Others:") can read them both.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 2:06 PM on June 22, 2006

The Sites folder was already read-only; the culprit was the home folder. Changing it from no access to read-only solved the problem. Thanks!
posted by mcwetboy at 2:18 PM on June 22, 2006