xampp 1.7.3 upgrade broken virtual hosts access forbidden

Question

I've got a similar issue to that reported by another user here XAMPP v1.7.4 installation issues,local host not working

Upgrading xampp to 1.7.3 (osx) in my case has broken my virtual hosts.

In /etc/hosts I've got

127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost  
fe80::1%lo0     localhost

127.0.0.1 mysite.test

In /Applications/XAMPP/etc/httpd.conf I've got:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so #uncommented
Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf #uncommented

In /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf I've got: # Use name-based virtual hosting. NameVirtualHost *:80 NameVirtualHost *:443

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName mysite.test
  DocumentRoot "/path-to-mysite/"
  <Directory "/path-to-mysite/">
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

When tryng to access mysite.test Apache is logged in the following error [error] [client 127.0.0.1] (13)Permission denied: access to / denied

I've deleted the .htaccess, and repaired my disk permissions in case that was causing the problem.

Can anyone suggest what I might be missing?

Thanks ahead.

Lenticularis

Answer 1

Make sure that there isn't a changed permission in your main .conf file. Could be an AllowOverride None or something that is causing the problem.

Substantialize

Hi Inquam, wouldn't that be overridden by the directive above? the main .conf does start with an AllowOverride None, but I thought any more local directives over-rode that. – Lenticularis

If the main .conf has an AllowOverride None then that could very well be your problem (depending on the folder it's connected to etc). Since this could tell the server that no overrides are permitted for you htdocs folder for instance. When you then try to set new directives for you vhost it would remember that this is not permitted as per the main .conf file. So try to change that in you maninb conf file and see if it starts working. Remember to restart your webserver so it rereads the config file. – Substantialize

Hi Inquam, it's now got a new error reporting that it cant read the .htaccess file. So I put the file back in and made sure it has read permissions, but it's still complaining about the same problem. Restarted server after each change. Don't know if it's related, but these files are sitting in a subdirectory of Dropbox, and I think I've had issues with file permissions in the past due to Dropbox. – Lenticularis

Is it looking for the .htaccess in the correct place? Skip the .htaccess and put in a fake index.html and see if reach it. Otherwise there might be an issue with you paths or something. – Substantialize

Interesting. I copied the files out of Dropbox, adjusted the paths in virtualhosts, and it now works. Minus one for Dropbox. – Lenticularis

Yea Dropbox can screw thing up unfortunately. Glad it works for you ;) – Substantialize

Yes well thank you for pointing out the contributing problem with the change in the main conf file as well! – Lenticularis

Done! Sorry thought i had, but I'd only done the vote up. ; ) – Lenticularis