Suddenly, access denied to all users [#1423678]

On a very lean 6.22 installation, authorized users (even the superuser) requesting files from the private directory have all suddenly begun seeing Access Denied errors, beginning sometime within the last few weeks. PD was working well prior to that.

I've verified permissions settings, uninstalled and reinstalled the PD module, rebuild content permissions, cleared Drupal and browser caches, tried multiple browsers, checked the db for errors, and verified permissions and .htaccess contents in the file system. Everything seems to be correct, and there are no anomalous log entries (on the server or on Drupal). Firebug returns a solid 403-Forbidden error for every private directory request.

The only changes made to the site for the last several months have been run-of-the-mill module updates (which were also performed on a separate Drupal 6.22 installation that is running PD without any difficulty), and the addition of content to the private directory via SFTP.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other sources of this problem? I am fresh out of ideas on this one.

Comments

Comment #1

mjt772 CreditAttribution: mjt772 commented 1 February 2012 at 01:21

I also tried updating to the 6.x-1.x-dev (6.x-1.3+1-dev) version, but the problem persists.

Comment #2

johnhanley CreditAttribution: johnhanley commented 3 February 2012 at 20:20

It's possible 6.21/6.22 inadvertently introduced some sort of incompatibility with PD (?)

Has anyone else experienced a problem with the recent core update?

Comment #3

kwinz CreditAttribution: kwinz commented 4 February 2012 at 21:46

I had a very similar problem, and just solved it. The long story - my site is on 7.1, and hasn't applied the new core update yet. I'm logged in as administrator, but suddenly I started getting access denied 403 errors when trying to use the facebook social plugins (fb_social). There were a lot of 403-access denied errors in the log, showing an anonymous user blocked from viewing pages, which must have been the FB Social plugin. But anonymous users are granted permission to view all content anyway. My hosting provider might have updated the version of php or something, I don't know, but I hadn't changed anything on my end. Then it occured to me to try rebuilding the node access permissions. I ran a full rebuild of the permissions, then I flushed all caches and ran cron for good measure, although I don't think that was really necessary. And the problem went away! The fb_social plugins are working again.

The short story - a content access permissions rebuld did fix the problem for me. Anyone having this kind of problem - try rebuilding your permissions cache (at /admin/reports/status/rebuild ). I hope this will help somebody.

Just to clarify - I'm actually not using the Private Download module. The reason I'm posting here is that this issue was the most recent and relevant hit that came up when searching for similar problems, so I just wanted to share some information.

Comment #4

johnhanley CreditAttribution: johnhanley commented 5 February 2012 at 02:04

@kwinz, thanks for your insight. I hadn't thought about a PHP update. It's worth investigating.

I concur that this sounds like a cache and/or permissions problem and clearing and rebuilding respectively should solve it. However the OP said he already tried both (?)