Troubleshooting 403 Error¶

Error 403 Forbidden can be triggered by many things, including permission issues, configuration restrictions, security settings, etc.

Tip

Have you checked your log files? They usually show you the cause of the error!

It is rare for the web server to be the cause of a 403 error, but just to be safe, you should rule that out first thing by checking whether the error occurs with Apache as well.

Does it Occur with Apache?¶

If your server is running on an Apache control panel, such as cPanel or Plesk, there is an easy way to determine whether an issue is caused by your LiteSpeed server:

Temporarily switch to Apache
Repeat the steps that originally led to the issue.

Are you able to reproduce the error under Apache?

NO¶

If the error could not be triggered under Apache, then the problem is likely to be a LiteSpeed server issue. Please open a ticket from your client area or email support@litespeedtech.com and provide as many details as possible, so that we may assist you.

YES¶

If Apache experiences the same problems, then the issue is not a LiteSpeed Web Server issue.

Switch back to LiteSpeed Web Server, and keep reading! Even though it is not a server problem, we have provided the following troubleshooting documentation that we hope will help you to find the solution.

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Overwhelmed? Don't have the time or interest to deal with these steps? We can help. Engage our team through Hourly Support, and we'll do the troubleshooting for you!

File Permissions¶

If the file or directory has the wrong permissions, you may see Error 403. Fix the permissions, and the error goes away.

Wrong File Owner¶

Make sure that the file or directory belongs to the correct user. Lets say that your httpdocs directory is owned by the username test, and you try to create a file index.php as user test1. That can trigger the error, as test1 will not have permission to read the file or the directory.

Denied From the .htaccess File¶

Your .htaccess may have code like this:

deny from all

which indicates that all requests will be automatically denied, or it may say something like this:

deny from <your ip address>

which indicates that all requests coming from <your ip address> will be denied.

Access is restored, when the deny line is removed or commented out with a # symbol.

Forbidden via a Rewrite Rule¶

If you have a rewrite rule that uses an F flag, any requests that match the preceding condition will be sent a 403 Forbidden code. That would look something like this:

RewriteCond (SOMECONDITION)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [F,L]

Indexes¶

You may be using directory indexing to prevent a list of files being displayed for when accessing a directory.

However, this can return a 403 error, if the autoindex option is ON but there is no actual index file (index.php, index.html, etc.) for that directory.

If you have this line in the .htaccess file:

Options -Indexes

Remove the line, or turn autoindex on:

Options +Indexes

Problem/Missing PHP Handler¶

If the PHP handler is not set up correctly, the web server will return error 403. This will be shown in the server error log file and you will need to check it for more information. After that, create the correct PHP handler to resolve the issue.

File Restriction¶

In Litespeed WebAdmin > Configuration > Server > Security there is an option called Restricted Permission Mask. If you set this to a high value like 644, very few people will actually be granted permission to view your pages. Lower the value to be more permissive with access.

Incorrect File Ownership After Migration¶

When migrating or uploading files to a Plesk account, some image files might incorrectly be assigned to nobody:nobody, when they should be user:psacln.

/var/www/vhosts/jsmith.com/httpdocs>ls -ald images/detailed/130/Untitled-1-Recovered_urba-uz.jpg
-rw-rw-rw- 1 nobody nobody 103609 Apr 12 11:21 images/detailed/130/Untitled-1-Recovered_urba-uz.jpg
/var/www/vhosts/jsmith.com/httpdocs>ls -ald images/detailed/130
drwxrwxrwx 2 nobody nobody 36864 Apr 14 15:12 images/detailed/130
/var/www/vhosts/jsmith.com/httpdocs>ls -ald images/detailed
drwxrwxrwx 51 jsmith psacln 4096 Apr 11 13:16 images/detailed
/var/www/vhosts/jsmith.com/httpdocs>ls -ald images
drwxrwxrwx 48 jsmith psacln 4096 Mar 31 16:30 images

The Force Strict Ownership setting in LSWS Admin specifies whether to enforce strict file ownership checking. If it is enabled, the web server will check if the owner of the file being served is the same as the owner of the virtual host. If it is different, a 403 Access Denied error will be returned.

To fix the problem, either change all files user:group to user:psacln ( in the above example, that would be jsmith:psacln), or disable Force Strict Ownership in LSWS Admin.

Incorrect PHP handler after migration from cPanel to Plesk¶

When migrating from cPanel to Plesk, the AddHandler directive that is targeted to ea-php in .htaccess may be carried over. This does not exist in Plesk, and will lead to a 403 error. Such directives should be removed from .htaccess.

Firewall Block¶

If Mod Security, WAF, fail2ban, CPHulk, etc. are enabled, depending on what and how many requests you are doing for a particular website, the firewall can block you. In most cases your IP address will be denied in the system firewall (iptables, firewalld etc) and you need to remove your IP address in order to avoid the error.

If mod_security rules are enabled, they may be triggerred for 403 error. For example:

[modsecurity] [Fri Apr 26 10:07:36 2019] [error] [client 111.111.111.111] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403, [Rule: 'TX:ANOMALY_SCORE' '@ge %{tx.in_example_score_threshold}'] [id "949110"] [msg "Inbound Anomaly Score Exceeded (Total Score: 10)"] [severity "CRITICAL"] [tag "application-multi"] [tag "language-multi"][tag "platform-multi"] [tag "attack-generic"]

Per Client Throttling¶

Similar to the previous case, if you have strict throttling rules and you make too many connections, it can trigger error 403. For example, you may use LiteSpeed's Per Client Throttling feature and set Connection Soft Limit and Connection Hard Limit. If any visitor's IP goes over that connection limit, it will trigger a 403 error and show the following in the logs:

[NOTICE] [192.0.2.0] bot detected for vhost [N/A], reason: OverConnSoftLimit, close connection

or

[NOTICE] [192.0.2.0] bot detected for vhost [N/A], reason: OverConnHardLimit, close connection!

reCAPTCHA¶

If a visitor fails on reCAPTCHA verification, it may trigger a 403 error.

WordPress Protection¶

If a visitor hits the LiteSpeed WordPress Protection feature with over-limit connections, it may trigger a 403 error.

GeoIP/IP2Loc or Similar Modules¶

If GeoIP or IP2Loc is allowed, they can block access to files like wp-login (WP Admin). In this case you need to allow them access in order to avoid the error.

Error 403 in LiteSpeed WebAdmin¶

There is an option to restrict access to the WebAdmin. If you forget to add your IP address, or if it changes, you can edit it from the configuration file in /usr/local/lsws/admin/conf/admin_config.xml:

<security>
 <accessControl>
   <allow>192.0.2.0</allow>
   <deny>ALL</deny>
 </accessControl>
</security>

Put your IP address in the allow list. For multiple IP addresses it looks like this:

<allow>192.0.2.0,192.0.2.1</allow>

Additional Information¶

The best way to diagnose and resolve that error is to check the system configuration, website configuration and the error logs. If you are unsure what is the correct configuration for some option that is triggering error 403, you can see the documentation for that option.