This happens when upgrading to Apache 2.4 from 2.2 or just because you don't have the right permissions set which we'll get into.
You need this in the ........
Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /path/httpdocs/news.html
There are a few reasons that can cause this message and this is for people who have ruled out the basics, eg. your symlinks are enabled and the right permissions are applied (but read on to learn about ownership requirements above the directory in question).
So there are a few key things here that cause Apache not to follow symlinks:........
So I have a domain "testdomain.com".
Inside test domain.com's root is the following .htaccess:
Options +FollowSymLinks -Indexes
ErrorDocument 403 /launch/index.html
Order Deny,Allow
Deny From All
Allow From 192.168.1.2
When you visit anything other than root things work fine. Eg. if you visit http://testdomain.com/somedirfile.html
It will show the right error in /launch/........
RemoveHandler .html .htmAddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html Just add the above into the .htaccess file for your website. Also remember that you need to be allowed to override the Apache and this should go into the vhost for your site as shown below:
# you need the AllowOverride otherwise .htaccess directives will be ignoredOptions FollowSymLinksAllowO........
I was getting very frustrated one day wondering why it appeared my .htaccess file was being ignored and not processed by Apache. No matter what I did it was obvious that Apache didn't care about my .htaccess file. Then I realized that the default settings must be in effect, which is that my vhost didn't explicitly allow me to override the default settings.
This usually comes down to your vhost settings. Make sure you have an entry like this in your Apache vhost settings in........