You don't have permission to access / on this server. error for html app on apache server

Question

root@ubuntu-512mb: /var/www/html# ls
about.html  fonts                 images      self-image.html  whatnow.html
audio       frozenyogurtshop.iml  index.html  singlepost.html
css         frozenyogurtshop.psd  js          whatidid.html

this is my project from localhost. i only installed apache and put my project there.

i searched some and i got those

root@ubuntu-512mb:/var/www/html# grep DocumentRoot /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf 
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html

so i put to true place.

those are permissions

root@ubuntu-512mb:/var/www/html# ls -al /var/www/html
total 50920
drwx------ 8 root root     4096 Dec 24 01:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     4096 Dec 24 00:35 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2380 Dec 23 23:05 about.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     4096 Dec 23 23:11 audio
drwx------ 2 root root     4096 Dec 23 22:20 css
drwx------ 2 root root     4096 Nov 21  2015 fonts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      335 Dec 23 20:25 frozenyogurtshop.iml
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 52076522 Nov 21  2015 frozenyogurtshop.psd
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     4096 Dec 24 00:06 .idea
drwx------ 3 root root     4096 Dec 23 21:37 images
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     6920 Dec 23 23:00 index.html
drwx------ 2 root root     4096 Nov 21  2015 js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2295 Dec 23 23:14 self-image.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2992 Dec 23 22:37 singlepost.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2111 Dec 23 23:10 whatidid.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2758 Dec 23 23:12 whatnow.html

at first it was working for indexhtml but then i deleted.

should i install another thing?

Solution

No, you should not install anything more, but you should change the owner of the content to www-data, which is the user that runs apache. Consider for instance the folder js, where the owner (root) have full access, but all other users (including www-data which runs the webserver) have no access.

The letters drwx------:

First character is special, d means directory. Then there is groups of three. The three first in this case rwx indicates that the file owner has Read, Write and eXecute permissions. The rest is - indicating no access.

If it had been drwxr-xr-- it would have indicated that owner had all permissions, group (e.g. members of the group that owns the file) would have read and execute, but not write, and others would have read.

To be able to serv a file the webserver needs read permission on the file, and in addition execute permission on all directories in the path leading to the file.

To change ownership to www-data, run the command

sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/html

This is makes www-data the owner of the files, and your webserver will be able to serve the files.

Comments

[hristof kuallamp]

ok thank you.i did not hav e sudo user so first i created auser and than thosehttps://askubuntu.com/questions/46331/how-to-avoid-usin‌​g-sudo-when-working-‌​in-var-www

[vidarlo]

sudo is not an user, it's a command got running other commands as root. But yes, that answer should work just fine:)