Troubleshooting "file permissions deny server access" in the Apache Error logs

Issue

I am seeing errors in the Apache Error logs with the message "file permissions deny server access".

A request to the file at issue will result in a 403 HTTP Status Code when the file exists on the file system.

An example of the error that appears in the Apache error logs looks like:

[Sat Apr 25 11:20:18 2020] [error] [pid=32389] 99.9.246.172 "https://www.example.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 12_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/12.1.2 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1" vhost=example.prod.acquia-sites.com forwarded_for="99.9.246.172, 172.16.7.93" request_id="v-be8e5acc-86e6-11ea-8918-a71767068142" hosting_site=example AH00132: file permissions deny server access: /var/www/html/example/docroot/sites/default/files/styles/user_profile_pic/public/pictures/prof_3skj39snmj3924.jpg

Resolution

These errors can occur on the Acquia platform when there is an issue with the Shared File System not synchronizing correctly. This can be due to too many files and directories existing on the files volume or an issue with the shared file service.

If you do have too many files or directories, please see our article, Optimizing file paths: Organizing files in subfolders, to assist with managing these better so as not to affect site performance.

If the errors continue to occur even after reviewing these, create a Support ticket and our team will look to rectify the issue.