Xampp Virtual Host Apache '403 Access Forbidden' AH00132 / AH00529

Question

I've been having issues with Xampp and virtual hosts under Ventura 13.6.5 (Intel Mini).

Xampp (v8.2.4-0) works perfectly fine with the default /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs directory and any website under this works. However i'm wanting to add a virtual host for an additional 'website' pointing to a directory under my user ~/Documents directory.

So i've enabled the vhost.conf file and added -

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot "/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs"
    <Directory "/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes execCGI
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted 
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName local.test
    DocumentRoot "/Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/test/public_html"
    <Directory "/Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/test/public_html">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes execCGI
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

The default Xampp localhost works fine, however local.test fails with a AH00132: file permissions deny server access: /Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/test/public_html/index.html error.

In terms of trying to fix it, i have tried -

• Made sure the entire /Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/ directory is chmod -R DeltaSierra:staff, which still results in a AH00132/403 error message.
• Have tried a chown -R 777 on the /Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/ directory, same result.
• Changed the Apache/httpd process (within httpd.conf) to run as User DeltaSierra / Group staff, again same result.
• Made sure the all the user/group ACL's (ie - user 'DeltaSierra', group 'staff' and 'everyone') on /Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/ are set to Read & Write (and apply it to sub-directories etc), exactly the same.

Looking at /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs, it seems it's permissions are set to root:admin. However, the ACL's on /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs seems to show a system user which doesn't appear to be on the machine.

So changing Apache/httpd back to run as the default daemon user and group, i tried to add the system user -

sudo chmod -R +a "system allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /Users/DeltaSierra/Documents/DevSites/

Which failed as the system user doesn't exist and returns a UUID not found type error. I tried adding the daemon user, which does exist and Apache returned the error -

(13)Permission denied: [client 127.0.0.1:54286] AH00529: /Users/DeltaSierra/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable and that /Users/DeltaSierra/' is executable

But that doesn't make particular sense and seems to suggest making the entire /Users/DeltaSierra/ directory executable.

So i'm at a loss now and it seems unless websites are under /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs, Xampp (Apache) doesn't want to know.

I don't doubt i've missed something simple but, does anyone have any clue how to get Xampp to execute websites under a user owned directory/within ~/Documents?

Really appreciate any help as i'm currently going around in circles.

P.s - the reason to try and get Xampp to load sites within ~/Documents, is because my editors have to be elevated everytime i save to /Applications which is extremely annoying when editing large amounts of files.