[CentOS] Forbidden: You don't have permission to access /phpMyAdmin/ on this server.

[Joshua Baker-LePain]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 at 7:32pm, Herta Van den Eynde wrote

> Environment:
> - CentOS 5.1,
> - Apache 2.2.3
> - php 5.1.6
> - phpMyAdmin 2.11.6
> - MySQL 5.0.22
>
> Brand new system, brand new installation of all the above products.
> All looks well, but when I try to connect to phpMyAdmin, I get an
> error:  "Forbidden: You don't have permission to access /phpMyAdmin/
> on this server".
>
> I'll forgo all the paths I followed trying to get this to work and cut
> to the "solution":  I renamed the phpMyAdmin directory to pma, copied
> all files in the pma directory to a new phpMyAdmin  (FWIIW, using 'cp
> -pr'),  and voilà, problem vanished.  (I cannot explain why I even
> tried that.)
>
> My first idea was that maybe the copy somehow resolved some issue at
> the directory level, but when I output an 'ls -laR' of the two
> directories to two files, 'diff' shows both files to be identical
> (apart from the timestamps on . and .. directories).  The pma and
> phpMyAdmin directories reside in the same documentroot, have the same
> ownership, and the same permissions.
>
> This must be about the weirdest experience in my professional career.
> If anyone can shed a light on this, it'd be most welcome.  I still
> have the original (malfunctioning) directory on the system to bounce
> ideas off if anyone has any inspiration (system will go live this
> weekend).

2 things spring to mind:

1) httpd config with directory based allow/deny

2) selinux

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
QB3 Shared Cluster Sysadmin
UCSF