Fixing that pesky 403 Forbidden Error

We've all seen it. Hopefully, this page will help you to understand the cause of the error, as well as how to fix it.

How does it happen?

In the great majority of cases, the problem starts by incorrectly mapping to your Unix account from your Windows based PC. Macintosh users do not have to worry about any of these issues.

It is important to understand that there is 2 ways of mapping to your Unix account:

• Map so that any files you create are Private
  • One way of mapping keeps the files you create private. This is appropriate for personal files, homework, email files, etc., but NOT appropriate for Web files. Nobody but you can read any file created when mapped in this fashion. Click Here for the specific syntax.
    
• Map so that any files you create are Public
  • The alternate way of mapping makes the files you create, open for the world to read. This is obviously the method we need to use when creating files for the World Wide Web. Click Here for the specific syntax.

If you create web files, while mapping so that any file you create is private, you will get a 403 error every time.

Now we know why it happens, but how do we fix it?

Unfortunately, mapping to your Unix drive properly doesn't change the access permissions of any files you have already created. It effects only any new file(s) that you create. In order to fix the permissions of any already existing file you have to take another step. The easiest way that is described in "Running fix_web_perms"

Created 30-23-98
Last Modified 3-23-98 
http://www.users.csbsju.edu/jgramke/Help/Web/403.html
If there is any questions about the information on this page, contact helpdesk@csbsju.edu