# 403 Forbidden! HELP!

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/403-forbidden-help/102679>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [February 8, 2007, 2:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/403-forbidden-help/102679 "2007-02-08T14:54:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![james](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@james](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/james)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 2:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/403-forbidden-help/102679/1 "2007-02-08T14:54:20Z")

</div>

I am installing rails on a hosting server ([aplus.net](http://aplus.net)) where I have  
very limited access (no root access, I’m limited to my /home/  
usernames/ dir). They had ruby installed but no rubygems or rails.

I got rubygems and rails up and running, I created a new app in  
[www.mydomain.com/testruby](http://www.mydomain.com/testruby), but when I go there I get a 403 - Forbidden  
error:

“Forbidden  
You don’t have permission to access /testruby/ on this server.  
You may need to create an index.html page or enable the directory  
browsing by creating an .htaccess file containing “Options +Indexes”.”

The [aplus.net](http://aplus.net) server seems to be running:  
Apache 1.3.36  
CGI 3.10

I checked my CHMOD permissions on the dir and they seem to be set  
correctly.

Man, I felt like I was so close to getting this running I could taste  
it!

I’m new to this server stuff, could someone please help me?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![james](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@james](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/james)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 8:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/403-forbidden-help/102679/2 "2007-02-10T08:20:45Z")

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> “Forbidden  
> You don’t have permission to access /testruby/ on this server.  
> You may need to create an index.html page or enable the directory  
> browsing by creating an .htaccess file containing “Options +Indexes”.”

Your Apache doesn’t know that you want it to route requests for  
testruby/ to  
your Rails app (which must be a separate process running on a separate  
port,  
connected to Apache via some form of a proxy).

Read this: [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/apache.html](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/apache.html)

Best regards,  
Alex Verkhovsky

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![james](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@james](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/james)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 7:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/403-forbidden-help/102679/3 "2007-02-11T19:32:38Z")

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I just dealt with this yesterday, it took a while to figure it out.  
For me, it had to do with using RewriteBase in side of a VirtualHost  
declaration. There relevant lines in my .conf ended up looking like this

\<VirtualHost \*:80\>  
ServerName [www.example.org](http://www.example.org)  
DocumentRoot /www/survey

\<Directory /www/survey/\>  
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews  
AllowOverride None  
Order allow,deny  
Allow from all

Alias /application /www/application/current/public

\<Directory “/www/application/current/public”\>  
Options FollowSymLinks  
AllowOverride None  
Order allow,deny  
Allow from all

```
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteBase /application/

 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ balancer://application_mongrel_cluster%

```

{REQUEST\_URI} [P,QSA,L]

Hope that helps.

-Jason