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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T14:51:03+00:00

I am on a shared hosting package on a LAMP stack with no shell

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I am on a shared hosting package on a LAMP stack with no shell access.

I can create symlinks using PHP’s symlink() function.

Let’s say my web root is /home/www/user1/public

Let’s say I have a real directory named /home/www/user1/public/real_dir

And I create a symlink named /home/www/user1/public/fake_dir pointing to real_dir

Why would I get a 403 Forbidden when trying to access www.mydomain.com/fake_dir but not when trying to access www.mydomain.com/real_dir?

It shouldn’t be a rights problem because when I create a file in PHP, I can access that all right.

I tried switching FollowSymlinks off and on in .htaccess (it was on), but no luck.

Could it be that FollowSymlinks is defined as not overwritable in a .htaccess file? Or is there something else to be aware of when working with Symlinks in Apache?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Apache has to be configured to allow access to the directory on the filesystem. This has to be done by a system administrator by inserting a <Directory> directive in the apache configuration files (httpd.conf).

    Since the real directory is inside the web root it must be accessible, but FollowSymLinks may not have been enabled for the directory – this also has to be added to the <Directory> directive.

    See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#directory

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