Ok So I Spent way too much time trying to figure this one out.

With a fresh Install of Redhat 9 and a White Box and Apache would not Read the index.html. It kept on coming back with 403.1 Forbidden and bringing me to the Apache test Page (I hate that Page now).

So I Ckecked PERMS and Made new Root directories to force apache to display the Index.html. I switched the file to index.htm and still nothing.

So I went back into the Redhat Apache config and switched the order in which is pulls up the default page
from index.html, index.htm, index.php
to index.htm, index.html, index.php

and it worked fine.

Why is this?

And if we can figure out why, then why did it not occur on a different box that I built, using the same distribution disks.

Is it hostname, network related, those aspects were different between the two boxes.

So it is an odd problem and if anyone has any insight on why this would occur would be great, because right now my faith in LINUX has gone down a bit.

Thanks

Those are not an order but just a argument/value apache looks for with default pages in a directory. Not sure why it works with a comma after each one listed as you usually don't need or specify a comma in that directive.

Also I'm a bit confused on your statement: "So it is an odd problem and if anyone has any insight on why this would occur would be great, because right now my faith in LINUX has gone down a bit. "

Shouldn't that be losing faith in Apache, as Linux and Apache are not the same thing... ??

I agree it is an apache problem not a linux problem, good point. The whole collective does get wrapped up in one name from time to time.

The order in which I put

from index.html, index.htm, index.php
to index.htm, index.html, index.php


does not follow syntax in the post, it is just the order in which they are to be read.

The commas are not in the actual httpd.conf file.

Has Anyone else had this problem?

Well its probably a Redhat thing most likely. I would go by the actual httpd.conf file, maybe the way you update in the Redhat configuration tool your using needs to have a comma to separate the values or it places them as one large value or something..

Have you tried without the comma's and then looked how it placed it in your httpd.conf file?

With all that said now, its not even an apache thing, its a Redhat problem.. hehe!

Ya I agree it.

I was using the utility because the people who are going to be using this machine will be using the utility, so I was getting familiar with it.

Whatever it is it is not pretty, and not fun either.

And well I guess I have not lost any faith, I was just in a gumpy mood about it when I posted before.

I don't use Redhat no longer but I would say this is something to bring up with them, find out if its meant to work that way or might be a bug in their tool.

Yes I will be going to them next.

I am not a big red hat fan myself but it seems to be the default for companies.

What do you use?

I like Debian and Slackware

Yeessssss ... I am having the same problem. I am very frustrated with this. I have tryed manually changing the httpd.conf file and also using the redhat config utility. Nothing seems to work.

OK .... I fixed it. I went back into the httpd.conf file and changed the DirectoryIndex to index.htm then restarted the httpd service and voila... I cant believe it was that easy after 2 days!!! There definalely seems to be a recurring issue with this. I am also using rh 9. Maybe only on certain configurations?

Thank you that was driving me crazy. Just changed the httpd.conf file and it works now.

Has anyone emailed redhat to let them know this is a prob?

Yes The Bug has been posted to Redhat bugzilla

If you want a good visual utility for managing your Web server (and everything else, for that matter), get Webmin. Just don't forget to limit your users to the modules that you want them to have, or they will have access to *everything* on the system.