I have a problem I have seen in other threads:
Similar threads
However all the supplied solutions don't work for me.

The problem:
I have three discs (hda,b,c) now I want to reinstall Gentoo but keep the server running as long as possible therefore I want to copy every thing on hdb1 (currently: /home) to hdc1, and mount that as home (so hdb is free to make a fresh install). I used "cp -pRv" for everything to preserve permissions. Now when I mount hdc1 on /home apache gives me:
"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server."

In fstab I have as options for hdc: "defaults,noatime" the same as I had with hdb.

Somehow the permissions do alter when "cp -pRv" I think. I use Gentoo so the SELinux settings (ls -Z) options don't apply.

Thanx for any help.

I started out looking for a really technical answer to this. It turned out to be a simple one.
I use Ubuntu, but it will probably work for anyone.

The default user and group set up in Ubuntu for apache is:
User www-data
Group www-data

These are set at install but appear in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
I tried renaming or changing these and apache died, but thats another story.

The default folder is configured in: /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

SO..............

You need to set the owner of the default folder and rights to the appropriate group, in my case:
/var/www

so you can use:

sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www

sudo chown -R www-data /var/www

sudo chmod -R 774 /var/www

Good luck and I hope this helps