Why doesn't this Apache virtualhost entry work? - apache

Question

I'm running Apache 2.4.6 on Ubuntu 13.
In sites-available, I have a conf file for my site that contains only this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
# Admin email, Server Name (domain name), and any aliases
ServerAdmin somebody#somewhere.com
ServerName www.ourco.me
ServerAlias ourco.me
# Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
DocumentRoot /home/ouruser/public/ourco.me/public
# Log file locations
LogLevel warn
ErrorLog /home/ouruser/public/ourco.me/log/error.log
CustomLog /home/ouruser/public/ourco.me/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
There are no other conf files enabled. When I have use apachectl -S to display the sites, it shows:
VirtualHost configuration:
*:80 is a NameVirtualHost
default server www.ourco.me (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ourco.me.conf:1)
port 80 namevhost www.ourco.me (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ourco.me.conf:1)
alias ourco.me
port 80 namevhost www.ourco.me (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ourco.me.conf:1)
alias ourco.me
ServerRoot: "/etc/apache2"
Main DocumentRoot: "/var/www"
Main ErrorLog: "/var/log/apache2/error.log"
Mutex watchdog-callback: using_defaults
Mutex default: dir="/var/lock/apache2" mechanism=fcntl
Mutex mpm-accept: using_defaults
PidFile: "/var/run/apache2/apache2.pid"
Define: DUMP_VHOSTS
Define: DUMP_RUN_CFG
User: name="www-data" id=33
Group: name="www-data" id=33
The first thing I notice is the duplicate entry for namevhost www.ourco.me. And when I visit the site in a browser, I get:
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Apache/2.4.6 (Ubuntu) Server at www.ourco.me Port 80
All the directories and files specified in the conf file exist. a2ensite and a2dissite work as expected to add/remove a symlink for this file from sites-enabled, so it's looking at the right file. Does anyone know why its directives are being ignored? Thanks.

Answer 1

Put Allow from all
<VirtualHost *:80>
# Admin email, Server Name (domain name), and any aliases
ServerAdmin somebody#somewhere.com
ServerName www.ourco.me
ServerAlias ourco.me
# Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
DocumentRoot /home/ouruser/public/ourco.me/public
# Log file locations
LogLevel warn
ErrorLog /home/ouruser/public/ourco.me/log/error.log
CustomLog /home/ouruser/public/ourco.me/log/access.log combined
Allow from all
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

This appears to solve the problem:
<Directory />
Require all granted
</Directory>
when placed in the VirtualHost entry.
That snippet came from this post. I'm looking at this Apache doc to see why it works.