configuration - Apache won't follow symlinks (403 Forbidden)

Question

I'm having some trouble setting up Apache on Ubuntu. I've been following this guide.

# /usr/sbin/apache2 -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.17 (Ubuntu)
Server built:   Feb 22 2011 18:33:02

My public directory, /var/www, can successfully serve up and execute PHP pages that are placed in it. However, I want to create a symlink in /var/www that points to a directory in my home folder and serve pages there.

[root /var/www]# ll
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 2011-09-11 14:22 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 2011-06-04 22:49 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   16 2011-09-11 13:21 about -> /root/site/about

When I try to access /about on browser, I get

Forbidden

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

As far as I know, I gave sufficient privileges to the files I want to serve:

[root ~/site/about]# ll
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2011-09-11 13:20 .
drwxr--r-- 3 root root 4096 2011-09-11 13:19 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-09-11 13:21 contact
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1090 2011-09-11 13:19 index.php
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-09-11 13:20 me
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-09-11 13:21 resume

I'm aware of the FollowSymLinks option, and I believe it's set in my /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default file:

DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
    Options FollowSymLinks Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

Any idea what I could be missing?

Answer 1

Check that Apache has execute rights for /root, /root/site and /root/site/about.

Run:

chmod o+x /root /root/site /root/site/about

You can find a more secure way in Elijah's answer.