Apache denying requests with VirtualHosts

Question

This is the error I get in my log:

Permission denied: /home/ross/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

My VirtualHost is pretty simple:

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
 ServerName jotter.localhost
 DocumentRoot /home/ross/www/jotter/public
 DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

 <Directory /home/ross/www/jotter/public>
  AllowOverride all
  Order allow,deny
  allow from all
 </Directory>

 CustomLog /home/ross/www/jotter/logs/access.log combined
 ErrorLog /home/ross/www/jotter/logs/error.log
 LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>

Any ideas why this is happening? I can't see why Apache is looking for a .htaccess there and don't know why this should stop the request. Thanks.

Answer 1

Turns out the way around this is to set permissions correctly on the following directories:

• site directory: chmod 755 /home/ross/www/jotter
• /home: chmod 711 /home/your_username

From bobpeers.com (Google cached).

Answer 2

When serving a page, Apache will check for an .htaccess file in each directory component starting at the root:

- /.htaccess
- /home/.htaccess
- /home/ross/.htaccess

Apache was unable to open your /home/ross/.htaccess file, either because it didn't have execute permission to /home/ross or read permission on /home/ross/.htaccess.

In order to serve pages, you'll need to add execute permissions for Apache to each directory component along the way. Read permission gives Apache the ability to generate indexes for a directory if you choose to do so; read permission is not necessary to open a file if you know its name.