How to fix Ubuntu Forbidden issue on localhost?

Question

I have installed Lamp and phpmyadmin in Ubuntu running on my computer. This is my Ls- L result on terminal.

drwxr-xr-x  2 root    root     4096 Jul  3 12:30 backups
drwxr-xr-x 19 root    root     4096 Jul  3 13:37 cache
drwxrwsrwt  2 root    whoopsie 4096 Jul  3 12:30 crash
drwxr-xr-x  2 root    root     4096 Feb 14 03:55 games
drwxr-xr-x 61 root    root     4096 Jul  3 13:37 lib
drwxrwsr-x  2 root    staff    4096 Apr 19  2012 local
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root    root        9 Jul  3 15:50 lock -> /run/lock
drwxr-xr-x 18 root    root     4096 Jul  3 16:56 log
drwxrwsr-x  2 root    mail     4096 Feb 14 03:52 mail
drwxr-xr-x  2 root    root     4096 Feb 14 03:52 opt
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root    root        4 Jul  3 15:50 run -> /run
drwxr-xr-x  8 root    root     4096 Feb 14 03:53 spool
drwxrwxrwt  2 root    root     4096 Jul  3 17:16 tmp
drwxr-x--x  3 krishna root     4096 Jul  3 15:11 www

When I enter http://localhost/ in the browser, it says

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /index.html on this server. Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80.
I am able to create files and folders in var/www folder but I'm unable to execute it from the browser.
How to fix this issue, please, suggest me? I am new to Ubuntu.

Solution

The /var/www folder needs to be readable by the www-data system account. Try this :

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

Edit : as noted by Joachim Isaksson, that was a quick fix to the problem. A more secure way of setting up the permissions would look like :

sudo chown -R krishna:www-data /var/www
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

You might need to give write access to www-data at some point though, for example to enable file uploads to your server. It's best if you can keep this to a dedicated directory in your website tree.

Comments

[fedorqui]

chmod -R 755 /var/www should be enough.

[Krishna Karki]

it says krishna@krishna:/var$ sudo chown -R www:root /var/www [sudo] password for krishna: chown: invalid user: www:root' krishna@krishna:/var$ `

[Miklos Aubert]

Yes, my mistake, it's actually www-data on Ubuntu.

[Joachim Isaksson]

Good thing that it solved the problem. That said, I think www-data should probably not be owner of the directory with 755 permissions, that means the web server can write to the web root and replace all your scripts. To me, having someone else own the directory and giving group read permission for the group www-data feels safer.