Over the last few days some of you noticed a 403 forbidden error from time to time. So I’d login, check the Apache error logs and see this entry “(13)Permission denied: /home/benjamin/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable.” Well the permissions were set, I had the executable +x bit for www-data set on all the parent folders. I would login and restart apache2 or chmod 755 my /home/benjamin directory again and it seemed to work for awhile…
This morning I saw the 403 error again. I log in, refresh the page and it works. So it appears to be an intermittent issue… wait a minute! It starts working when I login! I logout, and the 403 error is back. Login again, and it’s back to normal. Turns out I enabled home directory encryption on my account! I moved my wordpress folder to a location outside my home directory and now all should be good.
