Client denied error for a file that doesn't exist…

  • Running LAMP on Ubuntu 12.04 and finding the following crop up in error logs:

    [error] [client 127.0.0.1] client denied by server configuration: /var/www/domain/public_html/wp-content/themes/childtheme/index.php

    Now, the file childtheme/index.php doesn’t actually exist. I’d expect WP to automatically recognise that it should be looking at …/parenttheme/index.php and thereby avoid an error.

    – Does this mean there’s a misconfigured call in a theme or plugin somewhere? If so, what might it look like?

    – Or is this an issue at the server block/directive level?

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  • For starters, you need to make sure you have allowed access to the web directory in httpd.conf, something like:

    <Directory "/var/www/domain/public_html">
    Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

    If not, you will get the following error (at least with a fairly modern version of Apache):

    [Sat Sep 21 08:58:06 2013] [error] [client ::1] client denied by server configuration

    Also, since you are trying to call a non-existent “index” file, your results may vary (once you have allowed access to the directory) based on your DirectoryIndex directive.

    Thread Starter indietravel

    (@indietravel)

    Thanks Doug. Yes – the directory block is looking good — allow from all is on and everything else is working fine and not throwing errors.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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