A few months back I installed MAMP on my MacBook Pro to do local development. I found it a lot easier to manage than a regular MySQL install on Mac. Until things went south. Out of no where my MAMP start page broke and would only return this error:
You don’t have permission to access /MAMP/ on this server.
With an HTTP 403 Forbidden error. The Apache error log provided some additional details:
Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that RewriteRule directive is forbidden: /Applications/MAMP/bin/mamp/
That was enough for me to start looking through the Apache config file – /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf – to see what needed to be fixed. The Options directive for the start page, and the related pages like /phpMyAdmin, was limited to “Indexes MultiViews”. I didn’t want to bother with spelling out each option that might need to be turned on so I went with “Options All”.
If you have run into this problem then check the Options directive for the following directories: /Applications/MAMP/Library/icons, /Applications/MAMP/bin/phpMyAdmin, /Applications/MAMP/bin/SQLiteManager and /Applications/MAMP/bin/mamp. Change the “Options Indexes MultiViews” line to “Options All” under each of the Directory sections. In my config file that area starts on line 621.
After making those changes re-start MAMP’s Apache and you should be good to go.
51 replies on “MAMP Start Page Error”
All you should have needed was to add “FollowSymLinks”. Using all can be inefficient from what I’ve seen.
Mind you, I don’t have a Mac, and I don’t use packages like MAMP or XAMPP, so YMMV. 🙂
True, but in this case I didn’t want to worry about another option that wasn’t turned on being a problem. So I took the nuclear approach 🙂
Hi,
I had the same problem. What seems to have happened is that when I changed the blog address and WordPress address in settings, WordPress created some extra .htaccess files, the troublesome one being in the HD root directory. After deleting it, my MAMP start page and myPhpAdmin were accessible again.
Thanks mate, been trying to work this one out all day!
That is odd, I wonder why an .htaccess file ends up in the root folder of the hard drive.
I hit this a while ago too (just not in MAMP). If you do need MultiViews you still have to specify it. “Options All” does not include MultiViews. MultiViews must be set explicitly. So, you would have to do “Options All +MultiViews” if you need that functionality.
deleting the .htacess file on the root of my HD worked a treat! Thanks! Took me a week to figure out wtf was going wrong!
[…] MAMP Start Page Error || Joseph Scott A few months back I installed MAMP on my MacBook Pro to do local development. I found it a lot easier to manage than a regular MySQL install on Mac. Until things went south. Out of no where my MAMP start page broke and would only return this error: […]
Thanks Joseph. Good tip….
Ah, deleting the .htaccess file at the root level of the HD did the trick. I had been wondering about this for a week. Thanks!
This defnitely works to solve the problem created by changing your wordpress installation which results in an apache Forbidden message whenever you try to access your MAMP start page. Cheers to you.
[…] I filed a bug report at core.trac.wordpress.org. The ticket number is 10609. It looks like other folks have experienced similar issues. […]
Indeed, I also found a .htaccess in the root directory of my harddisk. After deleting it, MAMP’s start page was back in business!
Thanks!
The solution in the post itself did not work for me, but Eric’s solution did. If you can’t access the .htaccess file in your HD folder to delete it, simply logon to a sever via FTP, create a blank one, drag it into your HD folder and allow it to overwrite the one that’s already there. Problem solved.
With the number of people reporting the .htaccess in the root directory of the hard drive I suspect that is the main source of the problem.
Thanks Joseph,
I had your same problem. Now it works as well.
may i know where the places of .htaccess in directory.? I’m a newbie… I have been installed MAMP few months ago, the first time, the start page work, I’ve install WordPress, and run it. But I don’t know why, now my start page report “index of” where it’s display directory of file that i placed on “htdocs” folder in MAMP application. Can you help me…
One month ago, I tried to reinstall it, but it doesn’t work, and then l try to install MAMP PRO, replace the port of MySQL to 3306, because there a problem with MySQL, but now the problem is My Start Page where l can’t create database on my php. Thank you to solve my problem…
The .htaccess that appears to cause problems is at /.htaccess (the top level directory on the Mac hard drive).
Great!! Thanks a lot!
Thank you so so so so muchhhh!
Thanks for the tip. I posted a link here on the MAMP message boards. Seems like a couple of people are having this problem.
Thank you! For really really dummies like myself, I will put down what I did.
Since I didn’t see .htaccess file on my HD…..
01. Opened Dreamweaver (or NotePad) and created a BLANK page.
02. Named that file “.htaccess” and saved (overwrite) on the root directory of the Hard Drive.
Thank you thank you!!
Used terminal to show hidden files and .htaccess popped up immediately on my HD (hidden before). Trashed it, working g-r-e-a-t!
Thank you!!
Thanks for this write up, I’ve been wondering this all week and finally decided to google it. Thanks!
thank you, you saved me hours of hell…!
as above, you saved me hours of wondering what the heck was going on….!
Thanks everyone.
I tried everything mentoned on this page and had no luck. I am still getting the error:
“Error establishing a database connection”
This happens everytime I click “Open start page”.
Is there any other way of accessing the PHPMyAdmin area without a MAMP start page?
I’ve been stuck on this for weeks and have read many forums and tried a number of suggestions. Uninstalling and reinstalling MAMP doesn’t work for some reason.
The only options I’m aware of for fixing it are what have been listed on this page.
hey the .htaccess fix worked for me! it’s confusing at first. if anyone, like me, doesn’t know how to show or view the hidden files there is a nice tut here: http://theappleblog.com/2007/04/30/quick-tip-showhide-hidden-files/ it shows you how to make a simple plugin for finder to show/hide hidden files.
Man you rock. That’s a nice quick fix. Very weird that it just got jacked up for no apparent reason though.
thanks
Yep, it’s an odd one. Had me stumped for awhile too.
well, it does not helped me at all. file was deleted and nothing happened. Any more suggestions?
Unfortunately I don’t. If you find something else works though feel free to mention it here.
Joseph, Thanks for posting this. The solution I needed was Eric’s as I also had renamed my WP folder and deleting the .htaccess file cured problems but if you hadn’t started the thread he wouldn’t have provided his simpler delete .htaccess solution. So I thank you both very much!
THAT WAS IT FOR ME THANKSSS:
Used terminal to show hidden files and .htaccess popped up immediately on my HD (hidden before). Trashed it, working g-r-e-a-t!
After hours of frustratingly uninstalling and reinstalling – this finally did the trick! Thanks for posting Joe!
Thanks so much, this worked for me too!!! Sounds like a bug to me!
Deleting the .htaccess file worked like a champ. It wasn’t so much that it was created as much as it was where it was created. Silly that WP puts in the system (/) root directory. Thank you.
Thank you very much for this. You saved me a lot of time.
No problem, glad it helped.
I also experienced this problem recently and I can confirm that the by deleteing the .htaccess file in top level of the hard disk solved the problem. It’s nice to have this irritating problem solved 🙂
After reading these suggestions and still not finding the .htaccess file, I followed your fix and it worked. Yea! It did prompt me that I was replacing an existing file on my HD.
So… from another ‘really really dummy’ out there… thank you for sending in this suggestion!
Yes! That did it. Took me forever to find the solution…
Thank you so much! This was extremely helpful and worked perfectly the first time! Rare.
Thanks Joseph!
I had been trying the other fixes mentioned in the MAMP forums and they seemed to cause other issues. Changing AllowOverride All to AllowOverride None would fix the start page, but also destroy my WordPress rewrites.
This did the trick, thanks for sharing it!
Deleting the .htaccess file as described worked! Thanks for the help.
I had same problem here. WordPress put htaccess file with modrewrite params in HD root during installation. Very odd, but true. After deleting it everything works fine. It’s only WP installation related problem.
Thanks for this – very nasty bug, luckily found this post in 20 minutes and was able to return to work.
Well nice to see it worked for all of you. I’m still seeing the 403 Forbidden.
“Changing AllowOverride All to AllowOverride None” – DONE, not working.
“Deleting the .htaccess file” – Can’t find one. I’ve looked everywhere. Nothing!
I’m stuck!
PS: The folder where I have my site (wordpress) it’s working great. PhpMyAdmin is working great. But for the folder with an index.html i get 403 Forbidden!!!
as above! no .htaccess file!
I am using MAMP PRO and have Document Root setup on Users/me/Sites folder. My localhost works but none of the Drupal 7 Multi-sites within the localhost Drupal sites folders. I receive 403 permissions error.
I have permissions on the sites folder set to 666 and the settings.php file, so it looks like no issue there.
I have also tried to set httpd.conf to use the Options Indexes MultiViews settings on all the options stated. Still 403 Forbidden error.
I have no .htaccess in the Sites main folder but have tried to remove or rename the .htaccess file from the localhost folder. Still 403 Forbidden error.
It’s been 2 months now since I purchased MAMP PRO and have yet to solve this 403 Forbidden error and would appreciate receiving any help that is offered.
At wits end!