How to fix permission denied error on any document on website

Question

So, I've been trying to setup Wordpress for a while now (so much for their 5min install claim) and have just gotten stuck. No matter what, I just get:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /wordpress/ on this server.

When I look at the /var/www/wordpress directory, I see:

# ls -l
total 276
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   397 2008-05-25 20:33 index.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  7669 2011-02-15 17:48 readme.html
drw-r----- 8 www-data www-data  4096 2012-03-05 20:55 wp-admin
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data 40400 2009-10-25 10:32 wp-app.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   220 2008-10-14 06:22 wp-atom.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   274 2008-05-25 15:50 wp-blog-header.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  3928 2010-01-07 19:38 wp-comments-post.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   238 2008-10-14 06:22 wp-commentsrss2.php
lrwxrwxrwx 1 www-data www-data    28 2012-03-05 20:55 wp-config.php -> /etc/wordpress/wp-config.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  2616 2009-12-08 19:59 wp-config-sample.php
drw-r----- 5 www-data www-data  4096 2012-03-05 20:55 wp-content
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  1253 2009-08-16 04:59 wp-cron.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   220 2008-10-14 06:22 wp-feed.php
drw-r----- 6 www-data www-data  4096 2012-03-05 20:55 wp-includes
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  1946 2009-05-05 19:43 wp-links-opml.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  2341 2009-05-20 16:32 wp-load.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data 22859 2011-02-15 17:48 wp-login.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  7578 2009-09-18 20:43 wp-mail.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   487 2009-04-20 21:50 wp-pass.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   218 2008-10-14 06:22 wp-rdf.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   316 2008-05-25 15:50 wp-register.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   220 2008-10-14 06:22 wp-rss2.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data   218 2008-10-14 06:22 wp-rss.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data 23097 2009-12-14 00:38 wp-settings.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data  3693 2009-11-26 11:29 wp-trackback.php
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data 93445 2009-12-01 08:14 xmlrpc.php

So, www-data owns all these files. So, then I was thinking maybe apache isn't running as www-data? So I did:

# ps -A | grep apache
22511 ?        00:00:00 apache2
22513 ?        00:00:00 apache2
22514 ?        00:00:00 apache2
22515 ?        00:00:00 apache2
22516 ?        00:00:00 apache2
22517 ?        00:00:00 apache2

So, I guess apache is running as nobody? If I look at apache2.conf I see:

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

And in envvars I have:

export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data
export APACHE_PID_FILE=/var/run/apache2.pid

So, I'm totally stuck! Any ideas?

UPDATE:

Oh, also a tail from the error.log gives me:

[Mon Mar 05 22:29:17 2012] [error] [client x.x.x.x] (13)Permission denied: access to /wordpress/index.html denied
[Mon Mar 05 22:29:17 2012] [error] [client x.x.x.x] (13)Permission denied: access to /wordpress/index.cgi denied
[Mon Mar 05 22:29:17 2012] [error] [client x.x.x.x] (13)Permission denied: access to /wordpress/index.pl denied
[Mon Mar 05 22:29:17 2012] [error] [client x.x.x.x] (13)Permission denied: access to /wordpress/index.php denied
[Mon Mar 05 22:29:17 2012] [error] [client x.x.x.x] (13)Permission denied: access to /wordpress/index.xhtml denied
[Mon Mar 05 22:29:17 2012] [error] [client x.x.x.x] (13)Permission denied: access to /wordpress/index.htm denied

Update 2:

My sites-available default says:

xxx:/etc/apache2/sites-available# cat default
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www/
    ExpiresActive On

    <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/www/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
        ExpiresDefault A300
        ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
        ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 month"
        ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 month"
        ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
        ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 month"
        ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
        ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"

        RewriteEngine On
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn

    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Sites-enabled just has 000-default pointing to that.

Solution

Try going up a directory, and then make sure that your user has permission to execute into wordpress. i.e. :

cd ..
vdir | grep wordpress

Comments

[Mike Christensen]

Just the one default site available, and nothing special about it.. It's configured to allow everyone and just points to /var/www

[Mike Christensen]

@LucasKauffman - I'll try 700, I did 640 cuz that was the recommended setting from some Wordpress doc..

[Mike Christensen]

700 didn't fix it, same error..

[Lucas Kauffman]

What does your sites-available/default say ?

[Mike Christensen]

@LucasKauffman - Updated with this information..

[Lucas Kauffman]

mmm can't really see why it would give that error, if you create a directory in var/www/ with a simplex index.html, can you access it ?

[Mike Christensen]

@LucasKauffman - Sarah's answer fixed the issue.. Unix file permissions drive me insane..

[Mike Christensen]

Ah! You rock. /var/www/wordpress was a symlink to /usr/share/wordpress/ - So I did a chmod +x /usr/share/wordpress/ and that fixed the issue..

[Sarah C. Corriher]

Glad I could be of help. Also, 600 (or 640) are wiser permissions for your files. Directories need execute permissions, but php files do not, and it is always best to keep them as locked down as possible.