I am an almost complete Linux newbie trying to set up Apache to work. Out of the box, I added an index.html to /var/www/html, and everything worked fine. However, to get vsftpd to work, I've relocated the document root to /home/web-docs and created a new index.html. Now I only get a 403 Forbidden message. However, when I go to my web site root address, I get the Apache server testing page, so I know the server is up and running.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Are you running with SELinix in enforcing (getenforce will tell you)? If so, then you need to set the correct attributes on the document root and files:

Hi macemoneta. Thanks for your help. If I create the cgi, etc. folders in /home/web-docs, will I need to run this command again? Thanks in advance.

The subdirectories and files created in the directory after the chcon will inherit the type attribute. You can see this with the "-Z' option of ls. For example:

ls -dZ /home/web-docs
ls -Z /home/web-docs/somefile

The default locations are set to the correct context when the packages are installed. If you relocate them, you need to note the original context and apply it to the new location. It's pretty much a one-time thing at the time the directory/file is created. This is how SELinux knows what functions are permitted on a file or directory.

There's a good document here.