If you’ve installed Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 already and you use the built in apache server “Web Sharing” you will need to follow these steps before your web server works again. If you’ve tried to visit a page on your local server, you will be greeted by this message:
Forbidden (403)
You don't have permission to access /~danielerrante/ezslide/ on this server.
Leopard fails to copy the settings from apache in Tiger to apache2 in Leopard. Therefore, you will need to follow these simple steps to get your server up again.
If you can vaguely remember creating a configuration file when you first set up Tiger called yourusername.conf, you will need to do that in apache2’s /etc/apache2/users/ folder and add the following to that file:
<Directory "/Users/danielerrante/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
Replace danielerrante with your username. Or, you can do all that by copying and pasting one line in terminal:
sudo cp /private/etc/httpd/users/* /private/etc/apache2/users/
Next, you will need to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and enable PHP5. To do this, navigate to this line:
#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
Uncomment that line by removing the pound sign.
Last step: Restart your web server by going to the system preferences, uncheck web sharing, then check it again so it restarts.
You’re done!
Source: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1187457&tstart=15
October 29th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Right on. Thanks for posting this, saved me a lot of time poking around. Seems like a bit of an oversight on Apple’s part…
October 29th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Thanks for the feedback, Jim. I spent a lot of time setting up the apache server on my mac the first time around, and it took a while to find a solution for the same problem in Leopard.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
You’re a lifesaver. I was trying to work out how to fix this for what seems like an age.
I should add that I had to do one thing differently, though. I installed Leopard with an Archive and Install and so didn’t have a /private/etc/httpd/users/ folder to copy. I had a backup of my Tiger install on a Firewire drive so I had to go to that and copy it in. Once I did that it worked fine. The rest of the steps were the same.
Thanks again.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:15 am
Thanks Daniel, that’s sorted me out. I agree with Jim too, Apple could have explained a bit more here as it does say in Web Sharing what you’re personal website address is.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:56 am
Thanks for this tip! I was just figuring out what happened to my Sites folder
October 31st, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Thanks everyone. If it’s helpful, click the digg button in the top right corner. Thanks!
November 5th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Thanks - I agree this is a life saver.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:32 am
thanks
November 12th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Wow. Thanks, and, like [post 8] says, you only need to go to the command line to fix this problem.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Thank you! That was exactly what I needed. The Terminal line was definitely helpful. The only thing was that the httpd.conf wasn’t letting me save, so I had to copy it to the Desktop, edit, save, then drag back, and Authenticate. Thanks!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
You are a lifesaver!! I have a Uni assignment due tomorrow and so I decided to install Leopard … as you do. Disaster until I came across your page. PHP now back up and working as before. Thanks a million
November 16th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Thank you!!! Very strange that Leopard did this…
November 26th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Hey, thanks for putting this up. I had the same problem.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:23 am
Thanks a lot!!! You saved me hours! I guess Apple should ass this to their “Leopard Drop-In DVD”!
December 28th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Thanks - a great help. I used BBedit for httpd.conf once I knew what the solution was.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
YAY Thanks!!! im 12… Now i can host my website!!!