Access Denied To A Single Directory

[JohnO]

Hello,

 

I am all of a sudden unable to access a directory of my site. I am instead taken to a 403 Forbidden page with this message:

 

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /<directory name> on this server.
Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

 

 

I did not make any changes in cPanel to cause this. But after the error I did check cPanel Directory Privacy and Indexes and don't see a problem. I also viewed the .htaccess files for both the top level directory and the one in question, but am not familiar enough with .htaccess files to make changes on my own. Besides, the server is unable to read the file.

 

Also tried clearing everything from my browser and restarting it, but that did not work.

 

The rest of my site is accessible.

 

Advice please. I'm stumped.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

[TCH-Dick]

Hi John,

 

I could see that permissions on that directory were set to 750. I have now changed them to 755 and the directory appears to be loading fine. Please check it out and let us know if the issue continues.

[JohnO]

Hi Dick,

 

Thank you for the quick fix. The directory is loading fine. I now see how to change permissions in File Manager.

[lynkali]

Strangely, I just had a similar problem on my domain. Two or three of my directories were suddenly set to permissions 750, but I had not touched anything. (And yes, I got the permission denied error on my web browser.)

 

The most mysterious thing is that when I first viewed the File Manager on cPanel, I saw "750" as permissions. After looking at a different directory and coming back to public_html, the permissions had reset themselves back to 755 and all was working again. I didn't do ANYTHING, other than look. That's very disconcerting, but it does seem okay now! Is someone at TCH resetting permissions behind the scenes?

[TCH-Thomas]

If you happen to be on the same server as John, maybe Dick checked it all.