Website is not accessible: 403 Forbidden AH01797: client denied by server

[Suhitha]

Question: Website is not accessible: 403 Forbidden AH01797: client denied by server configuration


Applicable to:

• Plesk for Linux

Symptoms

• The website shows an error similar to the following one:

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403 Forbidden

• The log file /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/error_log contains errors like the following:

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AH01797: client denied by server configuration: /var/www/vhosts/example.com/index.php

• IP is being banned by Fail2Ban after browsing WordPress Admin dashboard.

Cause

Custom Apache configuration does not allow access to the website.


Resolution

1.Login into Plesk;

2.Go to Domains > example.com > Apache & nginx Settings > Additional HTTP/HTTPS directives and add "#" sign before directives similar to the ones below:

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Deny from all

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<Location /example>
Require all denied
</Location>
3.Connect to the server via SSH and check if there are any .htaccess files in the domain's document root directory:

NOTE: Replace example.com with the actual domain's name

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# find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/ -name ".htaccess"
/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/example/.htaccess
/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/example2/.htaccess
/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/.htaccess
4.Review the content of all .htaccess files with a text editor and disable restrictive settings that prevent access to the site by adding the "#" sign before "Deny" directives.

5.Check /etc/httpd/conf.d/ for custom configuration files preventing access to example.com