PHP development server troubleshooting!

[feathertail]

Okay, this is like my fifth time trying to get LAMP set up on Ubuntu, and yes, that includes using XAMPP. (All I want to do is practice my PHP so I can write WordPress plugins! *sob* Why does the world's easiest language have to be so hard to set up?)

*cough* Anyway. I used these instructions this time, after uninstalling XAMPP and what were hopefully all traces of my last attempt at doing this. I'm not using Netbeans -- gedit is okay with me -- and I didn't get any error messages or anything, so I thought I'd actually gotten it set up and set to use /home/feathertail/PHP as the document root.

I put a test file in there, browsed to /localhost and got this:

Forbidden

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

Apache/2.2.17 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80

And for some reason it has the XAMPP logo as its favicon.

Can anyone point me in the direction of finally solving this once and for all?

Comments

[snakeling]

What are the permissions for this file?

[feathertail]

Permissions were read-only except for the owner (me). I set it to "read and write" for everyone and checked the box about letting people execute it as a program. No dice.

[snakeling]

Damn. It's been so long since I last installed LAMP that I can't remember what problems I used to have with it.

I haven't installed it since I did a clean install of Natty, actually. I'll try to do it this weekend using the same tutorial as you and see if I can replicate your problem. If nobody's found a solution and you haven't heard of me by Monday, poke me :)

[feathertail]

Okay, thanks. >.>b Good luck with that.

[afuna]

The XAMPP favicon may just be the result of browser caching: I've noticed that browsers tend to cache favicons heavily, on the assumption that these aren't going to change, since they so rarely do.

If the other things on the page indicate that they're not running on XAMPP, I wouldn't worry about the favicon, and would focus on the /localhost thing.

[feathertail]

Probably right. I'm not sure what to do about it, though. :\

[snakeling]

OK, install done, and everything is working swimmingly, which is good for me, but not so much for you :/

I must say this is not the most helpful tutorial I've ever worked with. For one thing, the very first command didn't work XD

Did you go through all the steps, especially reloading the Apache server? What are the permissions on ~/PHP?

[feathertail]

Sorry to take so long to get back to you. >.> After talking to a friend, trying to create a symbolic link to /var/www, I gave up and decided to use Play instead.

And the permissions are all "Create and delete files" for everyone. >.>; It's baffling.