Authz_core:error Client Denied by Server Configuration

Jan 30, 2014

I upgraded a copy of apache that was being used in work earlier and I ran in to some errors that were quite puzzling.

Every time I went to access the site, I was shown an error in the logs that read:

  [authz_core:error] [pid 26128:tid 2964360000] [client <IPADDRESS>:49688] AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /path/to/file.wsgi

Nothing had changed in the application so after consulting the great google, I found out that mod_authz_core was introduced in Apache2.3. This changes the way that access control is declared from

  Order allow, deny
  Allow from all

to :

  Require all granted

This means that the total configuration for a Directory is now something like:

  <Directory /path/to/directory>
    Options FollowSymlinks
    AllowOverride none
    Require all granted
  </Directory>

Restart apache and it’ll all work nicely.