Apache - 403 Forbidden

Question

I know this question has been asked a lot of times but I'm completely stucked. My /var/www/html folder contains:

mbfr/
|-- index.html
|
school/
|-- index.html

I want to exemple.com serves the mbfr directory and exemple.com/school serves the school directory. Here is my VirtualHosts config file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName exemple.com

    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html

    Alias / /mbfr
    Alias /school /school

    <Directory "/var/www/html/school">
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
            Require all granted
    </Directory>

    <Directory "/var/www/html/mbfr">
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
            Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

exemple.com works fine but exemple.com/school gives me

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

Answer 1

Do you have the correct permissions set on the */school folder? I had the same 403 message recently after reinstalling a folder in /var/www/html after an OS upgrade. It turned out that the premissions on the individual files were ok but on the folder only I myself as owner had read, write and execution permissions. Group and others also needed read and execution permissions so a simple chmod a+rx did the trick for me. Could be worth checking.

Answer 2

Please understand that my answer below is not an actual solution but a workaround, as it removes a security enforcement around httpd and the effects of this action can not be predicted. Although, until you figure out what a good and permanent solution is, it works.

as root user on your server, execute the commands below

setenforce 0
service httpd start

the setenforce 0 command puts apache in to SELinux Permissive mode. As I am not a web administrator and have no intrinsic knowledge of apache, I am not aware of repercussions of this action. Maybe someone can enlighten both of us. Since my webserver is not anything critical, I really could not care less. I am okay if I have to install the server from scratch. But your case might be different. So, take my advice with a grain of salt. A large grain at that.