Error - Directory index forbidden by Options directive?

Question

I have been working on this server for the entire semester and have not changed any configuration options - the directories/files I created a couple weeks ago are still accessible, however any new directories, even exact duplicate of old working directories don't let me access them - get error "Directory index forbidden by Options directive". What is causing this?

Answer 1

Looks like someone disabled directory listing in Apache. If you are allowed to override it with .htaccess just place an .htaccess file in your root web directory with this information:

Options +Indexes

Answer 2

For me this was an issue with not simply having an index.html or index.php (depending on what is in the .htaccess file) file in a folder and trying to pull it's contents. Then again I was using php to read contents, not by command line like I assume you are. If you still have not found a solution try creating an index.(php,html) in the directory that you can't pull contents from.

Answer 3

For me what helped was, walking thru the explanations in the httpd.conf file and making sure I am compliant. The below comment helped:

 # The path to the end user account 'public_html' directory must be
 # accessible to the webserver userid.  This usually means that ~userid
 # must have permissions of 711, ~userid/public_html must have permissions
 # of 755, and documents contained therein must be world-readable.
 # Otherwise, the client will only receive a "403 Forbidden" message.

I was trying to move the document root and I hadn't set up the right perms..

Answer 4

For me worked in Wordpress. Error was Forbidden access wp-admin. I created .htaccess with Options +Indexes content.

Thank you.