Forbidden 403 apache2 on Ubuntu

Question

Well this is the mistake I’m having with my apache. I changed my apache directory to: /media/marcelo/Arquivos/Google Drive/localhost and this directory has 777 permission.

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80

Below are the last two lines of apache2 log

::1 - - [09/May/2017:19:26:28 -0300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 501 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/56.0.2924.76 Chrome/56.0.2924.76 Safari/537.36"
::1 - - [09/May/2017:19:26:29 -0300] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 403 511 "http://localhost/" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/56.0.2924.76 Chrome/56.0.2924.76 Safari/537.36"

The photo of the folder that has permission 777:

Follow the configuration of apache2.conf

# This is the main Apache server configuration file.  It contains the
# configuration directives that give the server its instructions.
# See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/ for detailed information about
# the directives and /usr/share/doc/apache2/README.Debian about Debian specific
# hints.
#
#
# Summary of how the Apache 2 configuration works in Debian:
# The Apache 2 web server configuration in Debian is quite different to
# upstream's suggested way to configure the web server. This is because Debian's
# default Apache2 installation attempts to make adding and removing modules,
# virtual hosts, and extra configuration directives as flexible as possible, in
# order to make automating the changes and administering the server as easy as
# possible.

# It is split into several files forming the configuration hierarchy outlined
# below, all located in the /etc/apache2/ directory:
#
#   /etc/apache2/
#   |-- apache2.conf
#   |   `--  ports.conf
#   |-- mods-enabled
#   |   |-- *.load
#   |   `-- *.conf
#   |-- conf-enabled
#   |   `-- *.conf
#   `-- sites-enabled
#       `-- *.conf
#
#
# * apache2.conf is the main configuration file (this file). It puts the pieces
#   together by including all remaining configuration files when starting up the
#   web server.
#
# * ports.conf is always included from the main configuration file. It is
#   supposed to determine listening ports for incoming connections which can be
#   customized anytime.
#
# * Configuration files in the mods-enabled/, conf-enabled/ and sites-enabled/
#   directories contain particular configuration snippets which manage modules,
#   global configuration fragments, or virtual host configurations,
#   respectively.
#
#   They are activated by symlinking available configuration files from their
#   respective *-available/ counterparts. These should be managed by using our
#   helpers a2enmod/a2dismod, a2ensite/a2dissite and a2enconf/a2disconf. See
#   their respective man pages for detailed information.
#
# * The binary is called apache2. Due to the use of environment variables, in
#   the default configuration, apache2 needs to be started/stopped with
#   /etc/init.d/apache2 or apache2ctl. Calling /usr/bin/apache2 directly will not
#   work with the default configuration.


# Global configuration
#

#
# ServerRoot: The top of the directory tree under which the server's
# configuration, error, and log files are kept.
#
# NOTE!  If you intend to place this on an NFS (or otherwise network)
# mounted filesystem then please read the Mutex documentation (available
# at );
# you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
#
# Do NOT add a slash at the end of the directory path.
#
#ServerRoot "/etc/apache2"

#
# The accept serialization lock file MUST BE STORED ON A LOCAL DISK.
#
Mutex file:${APACHE_LOCK_DIR} default

#
# PidFile: The file in which the server should record its process
# identification number when it starts.
# This needs to be set in /etc/apache2/envvars
#
PidFile ${APACHE_PID_FILE}

#
# Timeout: The number of seconds before receives and sends time out.
#
Timeout 300

#
# KeepAlive: Whether or not to allow persistent connections (more than
# one request per connection). Set to "Off" to deactivate.
#
KeepAlive On

#
# MaxKeepAliveRequests: The maximum number of requests to allow
# during a persistent connection. Set to 0 to allow an unlimited amount.
# We recommend you leave this number high, for maximum performance.
#
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100

#
# KeepAliveTimeout: Number of seconds to wait for the next request from the
# same client on the same connection.
#
KeepAliveTimeout 5


# These need to be set in /etc/apache2/envvars
User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}

#
# HostnameLookups: Log the names of clients or just their IP addresses
# e.g., www.apache.org (on) or 204.62.129.132 (off).
# The default is off because it'd be overall better for the net if people
# had to knowingly turn this feature on, since enabling it means that
# each client request will result in AT LEAST one lookup request to the
# nameserver.
#
HostnameLookups Off

# ErrorLog: The location of the error log file.
# If you do not specify an ErrorLog directive within a 
# container, error messages relating to that virtual host will be
# logged here.  If you *do* define an error logfile for a 
# container, that host's errors will be logged there and not here.
#
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

#
# LogLevel: Control the severity of messages logged to the error_log.
# Available values: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the log level for particular modules, e.g.
# "LogLevel info ssl:warn"
#
LogLevel warn

# Include module configuration:
IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.load
IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.conf

# Include list of ports to listen on
Include ports.conf


# Sets the default security model of the Apache2 HTTPD server. It does
# not allow access to the root filesystem outside of /usr/share and /var/www.
# The former is used by web applications packaged in Debian,
# the latter may be used for local directories served by the web server. If
# your system is serving content from a sub-directory in /srv you must allow
# access here, or in any related virtual host.

    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all denied



    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted

#estava /var/www/

    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted


#
#   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
#   AllowOverride None
#   Require all granted
#




# AccessFileName: The name of the file to look for in each directory
# for additional configuration directives.  See also the AllowOverride
# directive.
#
AccessFileName .htaccess

#
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being
# viewed by Web clients.
#

    Require all denied



#
# The following directives define some format nicknames for use with
# a CustomLog directive.
#
# These deviate from the Common Log Format definitions in that they use %O
# (the actual bytes sent including headers) instead of %b (the size of the
# requested file), because the latter makes it impossible to detect partial
# requests.
#
# Note that the use of %{X-Forwarded-For}i instead of %h is not recommended.
# Use mod_remoteip instead.
#
LogFormat "%v:%p %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" vhost_combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent

# Include of directories ignores editors' and dpkg's backup files,
# see README.Debian for details.

# Include generic snippets of statements
IncludeOptional conf-enabled/*.conf

# Include the virtual host configurations:
IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

Follow the file /apache2/site-enabled/000-default.conf(single file)

    # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
    # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
    # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
    # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
    # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
    # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
    # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
    #ServerName www.example.com
    #ESTAVA ______ /var/www/html

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot "/media/marcelo/Arquivos/Google Drive/localhost"

    # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
    # error, crit, alert, emerg.
    # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
    # modules, e.g.
    #LogLevel info ssl:warn

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

    # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
    # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
    # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
    # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
    # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
    #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf


# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

Answer 1

The problem of displaying permission error and then the error of not processing php scripts via Apache apparently is caused by some wrong editing your, or more probably because you installed something manually or didn’t actually install PHP.

Systems like Ubuntu and Debian if they are using the official repositories (from apt) will rarely cause any problem like that, presumed or that you installed it manually yourself or that you edited the sources.list, of course you also have the possibility of trying to install PHP7 that is not usually in the official repositories.

You mentioned you used the command apt-get install lampp, I’ll be honest, at least in the official repositories such a package lampp does not exist, this must be from another source, not being official source so I can not offer you an answer based on it, but I can explain to you how to install Apache + PHP + mysql in more common way in distros based on Ubuntu.

First of all:

sudo apt-get update

Installing the Apache:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Installing PHP7 and 5.6

sudo apt-get install php7.1 php5.6 php5.6-mysql php-gettext php5.6-mbstring libapache2-mod-php5.6 libapache2-mod-php7.1

If you only want to install 5.6:

sudo apt-get install php5.6 php5.6-mysql php-gettext php5.6-mbstring libapache2-mod-php5.6

Or just the 7.1:

sudo apt-get install php7.1 php7.1-mysql php-gettext php7.1-mbstring libapache2-mod-php7.1

To switch between PHP7.1 and 5.6 use the following commands (if both are installed):

• Using PHP 7.1

  sudo a2dismod php5.6
  sudo a2enmod php7.1
  sudo service apache2 restart
  

• Using PHP 5.6

  sudo a2dismod php7.1
  sudo a2enmod php5.6
  sudo service apache2 restart
  

Ready no need to configure anything in Apache, this is done automatically, so just change the folder permissions /etc/www/ (or change the owner) and then put your scripts php inside this folder.

It is important that you note that php.ini used by Apache changes location depending on the version you are using from php.ini, can search the location used a script like this:

<?php
phpinfo();

The generated page if opened via Apache will inform you the correct location.

Xampp as an alternative

All I showed is a rather basic installation, if you want to have something like a dashboard and some extra tools there is a package called Xampp, but that is not in the official Ubuntu repositories (I believe), it can be installed easily after downloading from the site https://www.apachefriends.org/pt_br/index.html

You can use a wget also:

wget https://www.apachefriends.org/xampp-files/5.6.30/xampp-linux-x64-5.6.30-1-installer.run

And after the download run like this:

sudo ./xampp-linux-x64-5.6.30-1-installer.run

If you want to use 7.1 they also have on the page https://www.apachefriends.org/pt_br/download.html