403 You don't have permission to access / on this server.

November 26, 2013 13.8k views
marcos.lenine
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marcos.lenine
Hi! I was having a problem when uploading new themes for my both Wordpress blog. DO's support helped me with it, saying that i had to create and edit a /.htaccess file. I did for the first droplet - ok, nice! When i tried for the second, i was not able to access my blog anymore and got exactly this message: "403 You don't have permission to access / on this server." Can you help me? Thanks
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10 Answers
pablo November 26, 2013
What's the output of: 
ls -la /path/to/WordPress/installation

If you see root:root sprinkled anywhere in there, execute: 
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /path/to/WordPress/installation
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pablo November 26, 2013
What (i) operating system and (ii) web server are you running?
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marcos.lenine November 26, 2013
Ubuntu 12.10 x64 Server vmlinuz-3.5.0-17-generic hosting in NY2..
Thanks!
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kamaln7 MOD November 26, 2013
Check Apache's error logs: 
sudo tail /var/log/apache2/error.log

Do you see anything in there?
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marcos.lenine November 26, 2013
Thanks for the Quick answer!

Here is the log's result:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gpuke3h7kl8q8oa/71w-5JCius#lh:null-log.png

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kamaln7 MOD November 26, 2013
Hmm, seems like it's not able to read the .htaccess file. What's the output of 
stat /home/wordpress/public_html/.htaccess
?
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marcos.lenine November 26, 2013
hmm here is it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/afrg6e5pdzyfi9h/stat.png

Thanks and Excuse my "newbie-ness" :-)
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kamaln7 MOD November 26, 2013
.htaccess is apparently a directory. Do you have any files in there? 
ls /home/wordpress/public_html/.htaccess
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marcos.lenine November 26, 2013
No, no files! but i'm not able to remove with "sudo rm"
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kamaln7 MOD November 27, 2013
You have to pass the -r flag to rm in order to delete a directory. So you will have to run this command instead: 
rm -r /home/wordpress/public_html/.htaccess
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