After upgrading my entire system, moving from Apache 2.0.x to 2.2.6 I ran into an interesting problem (actually, a couple.) Some of the configurations have moved, and things that used to be in the Gentoo dist httpd.conf have been broken out into config files in the /etc/apache2/modules.d/ directory. So, copying my old vhosts file in was not a good idea. And doing a merge of the old and new httpd.conf files was also a mistake. Once I figured out that I had the Listen 80 directive in one file and Listen 192.168.1.10:80 in another I understood why it failed to start. So, I fixed all the configs to match the new setup, and tried again. It started up just fine, and seemed okay, until I tried to connect. I kept getting 403 errors.

I went through the standard checks, checking the file permissions, .htaccess settings, and so on, to no avail. A quick Google search pointed me to the fix from Victor Trac. He found the offending bit in the new broken out config in /etc/apache2/modules.d/00_default_settings.conf where it contains:

<Directory />

        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
</Directory>

The fix is either to change that to Allow from all and define Deny where needed in each virtual host or to override it in every virtual host. Since I tend to set up my hosts with the idea that the server allows everything and it is up to the host to deny where needed I chose the first option, reloaded Apache and everything is sweet again.

Edit:

I found I was having an error with the RewriteRules after switching from Apache 2.0.x to 2.2.x – I found the fix on the Gentoo forums, which required adding an extra RewriteCond line in the .htaccess file.

The old .htaccess: and the new:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

and the new:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond $1 !\.php$
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Technorati Tags: Apache 2.2, 403, Gentoo

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