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Lockdown239
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403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by Lockdown239 » Tue May 26, 2020 7:20 pm

Hello all.
I'm trying to deal with an Ajax Error when upgrading to Joomla! 3.9.18. I downloaded the most recent Forum Post Assistant, put the uncompressed copy in my website's root, and get the following error when trying to access the FPA per instructions:

"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access this resource.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

I've reset the FPA script's permissions to different levels and keep getting this error.

Ideas?

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mandville
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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by mandville » Tue May 26, 2020 7:50 pm

so your website root has the fpa-en.php file in it, thats the same folder your config file is in
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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by sozzled » Tue May 26, 2020 8:11 pm

A picture may be worth a thousand words:
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by Lockdown239 » Tue May 26, 2020 8:26 pm

mandville wrote:
Tue May 26, 2020 7:50 pm
so your website root has the fpa-en.php file in it, thats the same folder your config file is in
Yes, correct. That's where the fpa-en.php file is located. This is one of reasons why I can't figure out why I'm getting that error.

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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by sozzled » Tue May 26, 2020 8:42 pm

I showed you mine. Can you show us yours?

What do you think is your J! website's "root folder"?

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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by Lockdown239 » Tue May 26, 2020 9:01 pm

sozzled wrote:
Tue May 26, 2020 8:42 pm
I showed you mine. Can you show us yours?

What do you think is your J! website's "root folder"?
Here's the website's root:

Image

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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by sozzled » Tue May 26, 2020 9:19 pm

Thank you very much for that picture. A picture indeed is worth a thousand words.

As far as I can tell, the most likely cause of a 403 Forbidden error may lie in the .htaccess file. Given that a typical "out of the box" J! website doesn't have a .htaccess file and it's suggested that, as a basis for building such a file, to rename the template htaccess.txt to .htaccess then we have to wonder what your [157 bytes] of .htaccess contains.

I would suggest that, as an idea, to rename your current .htaccess file to something else (e.g. htaccess.old).

Secondly, the owner/group for the website (two sets of numbers on the right side in the picture) may, or may not, be appropriate and may be another cause for generating 403 Forbidden errors. I don't know; I'm guessing.

Evidently, looking at the huge size of the error_log, you've been racking up website errors for a long time but, curiously, the last-logged error occurred about two months ago (23-Mar-2020). Begs the question(s) whether the errors mysteriously disappeared, whether you simply disabled error reporting on that date, or whether the site is actively in use. Again, I don't know what's going on there. The error_log can be deleted safely (because a new file will be created if there are errors and you have enabled error reporting in the Global Configuration settings).

I'm not trying to analyse the problem relating to an AJAX error in attempting to update your site to J! 3.9.18; I'm only trying to help you get the FPA report running on the site (at whatever version of J! you're currently using).

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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by Lockdown239 » Tue May 26, 2020 9:46 pm

sozzled wrote:
Tue May 26, 2020 9:19 pm
Thank you very much for that picture. A picture indeed is worth a thousand words.

As far as I can tell, the most likely cause of a 403 Forbidden error may lie in the .htaccess file. Given that a typical "out of the box" J! website doesn't have a .htaccess file and it's suggested that, as a basis for building such a file, to rename the template htaccess.txt to .htaccess then we have to wonder what your [157 bytes] of .htaccess contains.
Thanks; the site is active, and around March 2020 I added RS Firewall (which I have a license for and have it on other websites as well - it does not affect those sites' updates).

I'll try the .htaccess suggestion; thanks.

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Re: 403 error when trying to use FPA!

Post by Lockdown239 » Tue May 26, 2020 9:49 pm

The .htaccess suggestion from @sozzled did work; I'll run FPA and post the results in a new thread. Thanks!


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