Question

Under Windows7 I am running CentOS-6.2-x86_64-server (on VM) having Apache2 with php5 and mysql installed. The vm is working fine, apache and mysql are started.

Now I want to access a webpage on the vm host being opened by a browser under Windows7.
I get following message:
“Forbidden. You don’t have permission to access /index.html on this server.”

My windows firewall is activated. Via Windows console I pinged the VM server successfully.

What am I doing wrong or what I have to do?

Answer 1

This is almost certainly an issue of either permissions for the path you’re trying to access, or the mode in which you are running Apache. If, in your httpd.conf or ssl.conf files, you have a directive like SSLRequireSSL for this path, it will show a forbidden message when you attempt to access it via http rather than https.

Another reason this can happen is if you have http basic auth set up or some such, and cancel the login process.

Probably the most likely reason though, is simply having too strict permissions set on the folder or files that Apache is attempting to serve. If you go to the path where index.html lives, and make sure that both the directory and the files you want, are set to chmod 644 and make sure that you set things as being executable if there are scripts to be run, then you should be able to serve via apache as expected. You may also then need to chown apache.apache the files in question if they need to be writable by apache as well, but the former should get you going at least.

EDIT: Fixed a typo.