DNS resolves appropriately -- $ host myclient.ida.campaignfoundations.com myclient.ida.campaignfoundations.com has address 204.232.201.213 My apache configuration passes a syntax check -- # apache2ctl -S [Sat Feb 25 18:26:38 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts VirtualHost configuration: *:80 is a NameVirtualHost . . . port 80 namevhost this_vhost.myclient.org (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/006-myclient.org:2) port 80 namevhost myclient.ida.campaignfoundations.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/006-myclient.org:27) port 80 namevhost that_vhost.myclient.org (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/006-myclient.org:52) . . . Syntax OK The appropriate vhost shows me an expected DocRoot -- # less /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/006-myclient.org ServerAdmin hesco@yourmessagedelivered.com ServerName myclient.ida.campaignfoundations.com DocumentRoot /var/www/sites/myclient.org/drupal-6.22 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride None Order allow,deny allow from all RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA] # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog /var/log/apache2/myclient-access.log combined ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/myclient-error.log The apache owner has permissions to read files in DocRoot -- # sudo -u www-data less /var/www/sites/myclient.org/drupal-6.22/index.php again shows me expected output My logs (error and access) include no clues with my IP and the expected date-time stamp. And still my browser reports: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /index.php on this server. This appears to be the logs: [Sat Feb 25 19:54:22 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /index.html denied [Sat Feb 25 19:54:22 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /index.cgi denied [Sat Feb 25 19:54:22 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /index.pl denied [Sat Feb 25 19:54:22 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /index.php denied [Sat Feb 25 19:54:22 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /index.xhtml denied [Sat Feb 25 19:54:22 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /index.htm denied [Sat Feb 25 19:54:23 2012] [error] [client 174.48.250.91] (13)Permission denied: access to /favicon.ico denied But www-data ought to be able to read my 644 perm'd file -- -rw-r--r-- 1 hesco hesco 923 2011-05-25 16:43 index.php following the advice at: http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/13PermissionDenied namei output looks like this: $ namei /var/www/sites/myclient.org/drupal-6.22/index.php f: /var/www/sites/myclient.org/drupal-6.22/index.php d / d var d www d sites d myclient.org d drupal-6.22 - index.php