Forbidden: You don't have permission to access / on this server, WAMP Error

Question

I have installed wamp on windows 8 and received above error whenever I go to localhost or phpmyadmin. After much searching I found many answers which includes modifying the httpd.conf to Allow from All etc. This link shows such a common answer with further information.

My problem is that many have argued that it gives permission to all users to access phpMyAdmin and it is insecure and vulnerable etc. I want to create perfectly secure WAMP server and is it OK if I do this?

Can someone please provide me with some reference or information?

Answer 1

1.

first of all Port 80(or what ever you are using) and 443 must be allow for both TCP and UDP packets. To do this, create 2 inbound rules for TPC and UDP on Windows Firewall for port 80 and 443. (or you can disable your whole firewall for testing but permanent solution if allow inbound rule)

2.

If you are using WAMPServer 3 See bottom of answer

For WAMPServer versions <= 2.5

You need to change the security setting on Apache to allow access from anywhere else, so edit your httpd.conf file.

Change this section from :

#   onlineoffline tag - don't remove
     Order Deny,Allow
     Deny from all
     Allow from 127.0.0.1
     Allow from ::1
     Allow from localhost

To :

#   onlineoffline tag - don't remove
    Order Allow,Deny
      Allow from all

if "Allow from all" line not work for your then use "Require all granted" then it will work for you.

WAMPServer 3 has a different method

In version 3 and > of WAMPServer there is a Virtual Hosts pre defined for localhost so dont amend the httpd.conf file at all, leave it as you found it.

Using the menus, edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file.

It should look like this :

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot D:/wamp/www
    <Directory  "D:/wamp/www/">
        Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Require local
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Amend it to

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot D:/wamp/www
    <Directory  "D:/wamp/www/">
        Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Note:if you are running wamp for other than port 80 then VirtualHost will be like VirtualHost *:86.(86 or port whatever you are using) instead of VirtualHost *:80

3. Dont forget to restart All Services of Wamp or Apache after making this change

Answer 2

I find the best (and least frustrating) path is to start with Allow from All, then, when you know it will work that way, scale it back to the more secure Allow from 127.0.0.1 or Allow from ::1 (localhost).

As long as your firewall is configured properly, Allow from all shouldn't cause any problems, but it is better to only allow from localhost if you don't need other computers to be able to access your site.

Don't forget to restart Apache whenever you make changes to httpd.conf. They will not take effect until the next start.

Hopefully this is enough to get you started, there is lots of documentation available online.

Answer 3

By default wamp sets the following as the default for any directory not explicitly declared:

<Directory />
    AllowOverride none
    Require all denied
</Directory>

For me, if I comment out the line that says Require all denied I started having access to the directory in question. I don't recommend this.

Instead in the directory directive I included Require local as below:

<Directory "C:/GitHub/head_count/">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from all
    Require local
</Directory>

NOTE: I was still getting permission denied when I only had Allow from all. Adding Require local helped for me.

Answer 4

Adding Allow from All didn't worked for me. Then I tried this and it worked.

OS: Windows 8.1
Wamp : 2.5

I added this in the file C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www/"
    ServerName localhost
    ServerAlias localhost
    ErrorLog "logs/localhost-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/localhost-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>