Title: Forbidden = Failure
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Forbidden = Failure

 *  [senbei](https://wordpress.org/support/users/senbei/)
 * (@senbei)
 * [22 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forbidden-failure/)
 * I’m something of a newbie to wordpress (though I used to have a b2 blog), and
   I’m attempting to do step 5. of the readme: namely, “Launch /wp-admin/install.
   php in your browser.” The difficulty I am having has to do with permissions on
   my server, I think. Whenever I attempt this command I get the error message: 
   Forbidden
    You don’t have permission to access /blog/wp-admin/install.php on 
   this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying
   to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.” Additionally, I ran into this
   same problem on step 4: “Point your browser to wp-admin/install-config.php” and
   had to create a manual wp-config.php file from the sample file provided. Because
   I got the same results from running an installer in step 4, I’m resonably certain
   this is the same error. However, I’m at a loss to understand what that error 
   is, exactly. My server is running PHP version 4.3.3 and MySQL version 4.0.15-
   standard. Additionally, I am using IE version 6.0.28. I hope this is enough information
   to recognize my problem. Thank you for your time.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [Mark (podz)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/podz/)
 * (@podz)
 * [22 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forbidden-failure/#post-33585)
 * The permissions may be wrong ?
    Try setting the permissions to 755 or 766 ? If
   you aren’t sure how to do that with your ftp client, post back here 🙂
 *  Thread Starter [senbei](https://wordpress.org/support/users/senbei/)
 * (@senbei)
 * [22 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forbidden-failure/#post-33859)
 * Well, I tried CHMODing the files and I still got the error: “Forbidden
    You don’t
   have permission to access /blog/wp-admin/install.php on this server. Additionally,
   a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to
   handle the request” I’m at my wits end. This part of my site has been down for
   quite some time and it’s really starting to make me feel incompetent. xP
 *  [NuclearMoose](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nuclearmoose/)
 * (@nuclearmoose)
 * [22 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forbidden-failure/#post-33860)
 * Senbei,
    Have you entered in the necessary database information in the WP-CONFIG.
   PHP file? You can check out some [instructions here](http://blog.nuclearmoose.ca/wp-docs/read-me-beta.htm#installation)
   which may help. Look specifically at item number five. HTH. Craig.
 *  [mwk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mwk/)
 * (@mwk)
 * [20 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forbidden-failure/#post-34136)
 * I just had and fixed an identical problem with Fedora FC4. If your server is 
   running selinux, and you moved the files into the apache directory, you may have
   hit a bug with how selinux tracks file permissions. See:
    [http://www.issociate.de/board/post/182411/Sub_directories_forbidden.html](http://www.issociate.de/board/post/182411/Sub_directories_forbidden.html)
 * What made me suspicious was I could not access /blog/readme.html, but the same
   file with the same permissions worked from /
 * My fix was simple: I disabled selinux. Reboot

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Forbidden = Failure’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: [mwk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mwk/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forbidden-failure/#post-34136)
 * Status: not resolved

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