We have configured a web site with SSI for .html files on Apache/2.2.19 on CentOS 5.5 Linux. Works OK, but occasionally get 403 for the root page (index.html served as a directory index). No file system changes between when page works, doesn't work and then works again.
When it doesn't work it is as though Apache has decided that the index.html file does not exist so tries to serve a directory listing, but that is intentionally denied by our configuration.
Apache virtualhost specific error log contains entries like:
[Tue Aug 09 03:10:47 2011] [error] [client 66.249.72.3] Directory index forbidden by Options directive: /main/directory/
Apache general error log contains nothing.
Apache virtualhost specific access log contains entries like:
66.249.72.3 - - [09/Aug/2011:03:10:47 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 230 "-" "SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
Overall distribution:
# fgrep 'GET / ' `ls -tr domain-access_log*` | cut -d ' ' -f 9 | sort | uniq -c
1339 200
1 206
31 304
29 403
Apache config looks lke:
<VirtualHost ip.address:80>
ServerName domain.here
DocumentRoot /main/directory
ErrorLog logs/domain-error_log
CustomLog logs/domain-access_log combined
DirectoryIndex index.html
AliasMatch ^/(robots\.txt|sitemap.*\.xml(?:\.gz)?)$ /other/directory/$1
CacheEnable disk /
CacheDisable /sitemap.xml.gz
CacheDisable /robots.txt
CacheIgnoreHeaders Set-Cookie
CacheIgnoreNoLastMod On
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript
<Directory /main/directory>
Options Includes
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory /other/directory>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
