The infamous Apache2 “You don’t have permission to access / on this server” error started appearing after I updated my Mint/MATE system (Ubuntu) to version 17 (14.04). It is fixed by editing /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
You will only see this problem if you change the web documents folder to something other than the default, which most paranoid sysadmins will do. I encountered this problem when I upgraded Mint/MATE from v15 to v17 this week.
In the /var/log/apache2/error.log file there are lines such as:
AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /srv/www/sft2/
Thanks for the fix goes to Kai Hendry, @kaihendry
See the fix at http://dabase.com/blog/AH01630:_client_denied_by_server_configuration/.
Turns out there seems to be a new permission model, whereby this policy:
<Directory /> AllowOverride none Require all denied </Directory>Stops access to
/srv/www. To alleviate this, after that “deny all” stanza above you add the exception:<Directory "/srv/www"> Options All AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory>Read the Access Control bit in the caniocial Apache httpd documentation for more.
The details he provides a link to are at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/upgrading.html#access.
Kai’s twitter feed is at https://twitter.com/kaihendry.