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Computing and Information Services

What to do if you home page becomes inaccessible

If your account has been disabled for some reason, and later re-enabled, you may find that your web pages are inaccessible. In this case you will see a "403 Error" page when you try to access them.

To rectify this situation you will need to login to the Unix service, and change the permissions on your home directory. To do this:

  1. Start an SSH session to Unix by selecting from the Start menu: Programs > Durham University Network > PuTTY
  2. Double-click on either 'altair' or 'vega (Linux)' to start the connection
  3. At the login prompt type your CIS username and press Enter.
  4. Type your password and press Enter.
  5. At the Unix prompt, type cd to change to your home directory.
  6. Type chmod a+x . (don't forget the trailing full stop) to make your home directory accessible to everyone.
  7. Type chmod -R a+rX public_html/* to make your public_html directory's contents accessible to the web server.
  8. If your public_html directory is still not accessible, type chmod a+rx public_html. If your public_html directory is accessible after step 7, do not do this - go straight to step 9.
  9. Type logout to logout from Unix.