Apache localhost 403 error with Yosemite - macos

Question

I've just installed Mac OS X Yosemite fresh. I configured Apache and chmodded "users/user/Sites" to 755. When I hit localhost I receive a 403 Forbidden "You don't have permission to access / on this server". The same thing occurs with any other sites I add to my hosts file.
I tried configuring user directories following help from this post. The guys on this MacRumors thread know there is an Apache issue, but didn't offer a lot of suggestions.
My directory permissions look like this
drwxr-xr-x 29 root wheel 1054 Aug 11 07:30 /
drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 Aug 11 07:29 /Users/
drwxr-xr-x+ 26 zachshallbetter staff 884 Aug 11 11:57 /Users/zachshallbetter/
0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x 5 zachshallbetter staff 170 Aug 11 10:16 /Users/zachshallbetter/Sites
Can anyone offer any suggestions or help? Here are links to my hosts and httpd.conf files and error logs for reference.

Answer 1

You do NOT want to open up the entirety of your hard drive to the web server process. In fact, lines 215-217 of httpd.conf say:
# Deny access to the entirety of your server's filesystem. You must
# explicitly permit access to web content directories in other
# <Directory> blocks below.
Apache 2.4 (OSX 10.10 Yosemite) has a different structure from Apache 2.2 (OSX 10.9) for the Directory directive in Module mod_authz_core.
EDIT: If you are setting up Apache from the START, please follow this instruction set to setup apache and php on OSX 10.10 Yosemite.
Assuming you have mod_userdir.so enabled already, your problem is within your user .conf file (/etc/apache2/users/username.conf), edit (or add) the following.
Apache 2.2:
<Directory "/Users/jnovack/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
# OSX 10.9 / Apache 2.2
Order from deny, allow
</Directory>
Apache 2.4
<Directory "/Users/jnovack/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
# OSX 10.10 / Apache 2.4
Require all granted
</Directory>

Answer 2

Edit the file:
/private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
on line 250 (in Yosemite) change:
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
to:
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews Indexes
then in the Terminal run:
sudo apachectl restart

Answer 3

This might be very late answer but i did followed most of Stack Overflow solutions, None of them helped me for various reasons. So i did reset my device as a fresh Yosemite OS to get this localhost working on Mac Yosemite (with Symlinks too),
Steps I did exactly :
sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Uncomment the following lines:
#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
to
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
#LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
to
LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
to
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
Save and Exit (Ctrl+X press Enter and press Y and enter again)
sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
and uncomment the following line at line 16:
#Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
to
Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
Save and Exit (Ctrl+X press Enter and press Y and enter again).
Now go to apache Users folder to check your configuration file exist or not
cd /etc/apache2/users/
if you do not have configuration file in this folder, create one by
sudo nano /etc/apache2/users/<**YOUR USERNAME**>.conf
Replace <YOUR USERNAME> with the name of your machine (type whoami in terminal and enter that name).
after creating .conf file , copy below lines into that file
<Directory "/Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/Sites/">
AddLanguage en .en
LanguagePriority en fr de
ForceLanguagePriority Fallback
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from localhost
Require all granted
</Directory>
save and Exit
Now restart your apache
sudo apachectl restart
Now go to your browser and type localhost, it should work as expected,
Just as a Note: if it does not work even after try restarting your computer
create index.html as exactly index.html.en that you should find here:
open /Library/Webserver/Documents/
right click on index.html.en and duplicate it to index.html leaving original as it is
try again in browser and if you have success, you can delete the duplicated file
Just to be clear, leave the original file index.html.en where it is, untouched and unharmed throughout this step.
Not sure why I had to take this mysterious detour - probably something local to my machine, but if you're having trouble after following the guide above, see if it helps.
SymLinks :
if you have success, in Browser you should see
It works!
Now create symlink to any your project.
ln -s <Path_to_your_Project(index_file)> <Path_to_webroot>
For example if you have project folder in your Documents folder ,then point webroot to your index file by
ln -s /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/Documents/project/ /Library/Webserver/documents/projectlink
you might need permission to create symlink (Use above command with Sudo)
Configure apache to follow symlinks ( Thanks to tomvon, i do not enough points to vote you)
sudo nano /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
on line 250 (in Yosemite) change:
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
to:
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews Indexes
then in the Terminal run:
sudo apachectl restart
Now go to localhost/projectlink to see if your project index file shows here on browser.
Happy Coding..

Answer 4

The advice in this article helped me.
Specifically the "Yosemite Only" section:
First, there is a directive that helps secure your machine by denying access to the entire file system by default. I’ll show you how to remove this directive, since I find that easier on a machine meant for development. The section of code runs from line 220 through 223. You can comment out (place ‘#’ in front of each line) or just remove this section.
And the section is ...
<Directory />
AllowOverride none
Require all denied
</Directory>
Note:
As others have followed up on this with more details, the method outlined above can be insecure.

Answer 5

There are 2 possibility why your localhost is forbidden, first it may be because your apache setting is not correct and second, may be because you set vhost and you forget about set localhost too
sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Add this code
`
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "/Users/username/Sites"
<Directory "Users/username/Sites">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Save it and restart your apache
`
sudo apachectl restart
it should be works :)

Answer 6

Suggestions might focus on your own user specific conf in apache but by default this configuration might not be loaded at all.
Edit the userdir module configuration:
sudo vi /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
Uncomment the include of the user directory configuration files:
Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
Make sure you have a user directory configuration according our own username:
sudo vi /etc/apache2/users/.conf
Make sure you have good configuration for your home directory:
DocumentRoot "/Users/<username>/Sites/"
<Directory "/Users/<username>/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Require all granted
</Directory>
Restart apache (webserver)
sudo apachectl restart
Check your site!

Answer 7

Just create the 'Sites' folder in your user folder. Go to
cd ~
mkdir 'Sites'