Mailing List Archive

variable caused hidden issues
For ages my Apache web server wound not work properly.

Details:
I spent a while configuring and installing web applications. Like I’ve done on several other machines.
It was all working at this time. Then I decided to use variables rather than hard-coded values.

Check:
When problems first arrived, I ran “apachectl -t”, to test the syntax - it said Syntax OK. However each page that tried to visit (on my local machine) returned 403 Forbidden.

Due to other projects I ignored this and decided to fix it later. (This also gave me space in the logs - so I could distinguish this issue.)

The logs just said the "client denied by server configuration: ” then said my document root. This is quite general, but it indicated the problem was document root. So I looked for a .htaccess file - was none, so I created an empty one - no difference.

Using trial and error, I swapped each variable with hard-coded values (reloading Apache, and testing each time).

Fixed:
Finally it worked after changing the “<Directory “ for my document root. Quickly I examined it - looked OK. Upon close examination, I had $(…} instead of ${…}. A fine look revealed a parenthesis ( was used by mistake instead of a curly-brace {.

Yet apachectl -t said Syntax OK, the typo wasn’t picked-up.