Topic awaiting preservation: Forbidden

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /blog/wp-login.php on this server.

That's the message I get from FireFox.

The website declined to show this webpage

That's the message I get in IE7.

About 6 days ago, my hosted server crashed or had some issues. When it came back up my site was restored but with one significant little issue. I can't login to my blog, my pixelpost galleries, my coppermine gallery, or even my defunct phpbb forum. All are afflicted with the same issue.

Cause and Effect. I didn't make any changes on my end. So, I can see the content, but I can't change it.

My host is either too incompetent or they couldn't care less. They are not resolving this problem

Any ideas on what is causing this? how to fix it?
My plan ends in June so I'd like to fix my site up before finding another host.

edit: Apache servers (Linux/Unix), current versions of MySQL

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(Edited by SleepingWolf on 03-16-2008 17:44)

Are the databases still in place? You mentioned in another thread that the backup tool was giving you SQL dumps 0 kb in size, so perhaps there's just no data there at all?

In that case you could check with your host if they couldn't restore some older DB backup or recheck if they did indeed restore any DB backup for you as yet...


The "Forbidden" messages indicate file permission problems, though. I'd check if the unix user assigned to you by your host is correctly set as the owner of all files and directories.

If all that seems okay, your apps might also be expecting certain files to have different permissions, e.g. to give the web apps writing access to their configuration files. But all you are seeing are the "Forbidden" messages, it's probably a more general ownership/permission issue.

The database is there - I can see the tables and browse the records.

I was able to export the backup yesterday - it was an unrelated problem that I fixed by deleting thousands of records that suddenly cropped up when my site was discovered on StumbleUpon. Ironically, I can't change the settings to keep these records from being created in the first place (visitors, and stats) because I can't get in.

I agree it seems to be permission related, but I have full access to these files and was even able to delete and update files through FTP to see if that was the problem. Checked properties too..read, write, execute...all as expected.

As for the user - it shows up correctly in Plesk as does the database name.

Finally it is definitely not related to the apps themselves as they haven't been touched..some haven't been touched in years (phpbb forums) and they all broke after the server issues. All use mysql: the forum, the wordpress blog, 3 pixelpost photoblogs, and 1 coppermine - all with their own software, own tables, own userids/passwords...they all share the same database however (i can only have 1 database with this plan).

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(Edited by SleepingWolf on 03-16-2008 19:42)

Can you set the blog directory's permissions to something like 755 recursively (so all its contents get updated permissions as well)?

If you can do that through FTP without getting error msgs and the problem remains - hmm ...

Thanks.
I just go an email from them. All it said was the server issues had been resolved - no explanation.

Everything seems to work.

But I'm finished with Webserve.Ca - I will never deal with them again.

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