1

I am having a problem with OS X Server. I just bought it today, and I am getting a page like this when I connect:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe

Apache Server at localhost Port 34580

In my error log:

[Wed Sep 30 18:33:13.115898 2015] [core:crit] [pid 4386] (13)Permission denied: [client 127.0.0.1:51857] AH00529: /Users/user/Desktop/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable and that '/Users/user/Desktop/' is executable, referer: http://localhost/~user

I have created the .htaccess file and ran the command chmod 755 /Users/user/Desktop/.htaccess. Still having the same error. Does anyone know why this would be happening?

3
  • You are trying to share your desktop?
    – EEAA
    Oct 1, 2015 at 1:59
  • @EEAA, No just trying to host a web server
    – Bennett
    Oct 1, 2015 at 2:20
  • If you're not trying to share the files on your desktop, your configuration needs to be fixed.
    – Jenny D
    Oct 1, 2015 at 16:32

3 Answers 3

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Try to add your localhost ip to your .htaccess file as OS X uses a reverse proxy.

Allow from 127.0.0.1 #osx reverse proxy

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All the stuff that is done by the Apache Server needs to be done manually, I can only assume it has been set this way because you can't use the OSX secure identification and so they are not going to do it for you. The OSX help doesn't tell you straight but once you dig-in deeper into how to make WebDAV actually work it becomes obvious what is going on.

To the point: You have to set the authentication to basic. The directory where all the config files are is:

/Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/

the one you are looking for is:

httpd_server_app.conf

the line that would need uncommenting is

#LoadModule auth_basic_module libexec/apache2/mod_auth_basic.so

This is how you make it principally work. You should then enable SSL but I don't want to give any security advice because I don't know anything about setting up webservers. I simply was also fooled into buying the Server.app and spent a whole weekend getting to the point where I understood that the Server.app actually doesn't do what it suggests.

Important: If you enable a User that has a User folder on the Mac running the Server.app the this folder will get automatically shared and will be accessible using the log-in credentials. It is not possible to turn this behaviour off. I have the suspicion that this might be reason why enabling any form of Websharing requires extra user effort. Not sharing a Users home folder to the User himself can't be disabled for smb/afp either so it might be deep in OSX somewhere. Anyway, a Users homefolder gies Access to the ~/Library folder. This leads to the possibility of starting a LaunchAgent. Since the User starting this Launch Agent probably possesses Administrator rights and is able to sudo such a Launch Agent could do anything anywhere on the system, maybe the network.

-2

I had the same problem. Uninstalling should work. Paths to uninstall: /Library/Server, /Applications/Server. That's all I needed.

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  • To be fair. I considered that as well. The only function that the Server.app actually provide is caching
    – nonsense
    Oct 1, 2015 at 16:16

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