[Mediawiki-l] mediawiki 1.9.3 sticky forbidden directory

[Amir Tahvildaran]

I have a strange problem that I hope someone can provide some pointers for.

I installed media wiki on RHEL4 up to the point that the web-based 
configuration needs to be run.  A few weeks later (after leaving it 
alone) the same page gives "403 Forbidden".  When I copy the entire 
media wiki folder to a new name it works in the new location.  I swapped 
the directories back and forth and you can see below and the broken one 
isn't tied to the URL but to the actual files.

To sum up the troubleshooting I did:

   #starting off in /var/www/html
   701  wget http://localhost/vmtwiki/     #403 Forbidden
   702  cp -r vmtwiki/ vmtwiki2
   703  wget http://localhost/vmtwiki2/    #index.html.8 downloaded fine
   704  mv vmtwiki vmtwiki.bad             #show its not an URL problem
   705  mv vmtwiki2/ vmtwiki
   706  wget http://localhost/vmtwiki/     #index.html.9 downloaded fine
   707  wget http://localhost/vmtwiki.bad/ #403 Forbidden
   #exact session copied below

I tried bouncing apache at various points but can't seem to shake the 
"403 Forbidden" error on the original directory.

I also found some other posts on the list without resolution:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/mediawiki-l/2006-November/016027.html

Versions are:
Red Hat EL4 Update 4
php 5.1.4
mediawiki 1.9.3

Thanks for any tips or suggestions,
-Amir

[root at copper html]# ll
total 84
-rw-r--r--   1 root root    0 Feb 16 14:44 index.html
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  785 Mar  2 11:32 index.html.1
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  785 Mar  2 11:34 index.html.2
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  795 Mar  2 11:35 index.html.3
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  787 Mar  2 11:35 index.html.4
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  785 Mar  2 11:38 index.html.5
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  785 Mar  2 11:48 index.html.6
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  787 Mar  2 11:48 index.html.7
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Mar  2 11:27 test
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Feb 20 17:41 vmt_example_template
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root 4096 Mar  2 11:11 vmtwiki
[root at copper html]# wget http://localhost/vmtwiki/
--11:49:31--  http://localhost/vmtwiki/
            => `index.html.8'
Resolving localhost... 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
11:49:31 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

[root at copper html]# cp -r vmtwiki/ vmtwiki2
[root at copper html]# wget http://localhost/vmtwiki2/
--11:49:47--  http://localhost/vmtwiki2/
            => `index.html.8'
Resolving localhost... 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 787 [text/html]

100%[============================================================================================================================================>] 
787           --.--K/s

11:49:47 (125.09 MB/s) - `index.html.8' saved [787/787]

[root at copper html]# mv vmtwiki vmtwiki.bad
[root at copper html]# mv vmtwiki2/ vmtwiki
[root at copper html]# wget http://localhost/vmtwiki/
--11:50:30--  http://localhost/vmtwiki/
            => `index.html.9'
Resolving localhost... 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 785 [text/html]

100%[============================================================================================================================================>] 
785           --.--K/s

11:50:30 (93.58 MB/s) - `index.html.9' saved [785/785]

[root at copper html]# wget http://localhost/vmtwiki.bad/
--11:50:33--  http://localhost/vmtwiki.bad/
            => `index.html.10'
Resolving localhost... 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
11:50:33 ERROR 403: Forbidden.