Plesk hosted website or its newly uploaded images are not shown: 403 forbidden error

Renan Poss Moreira

Updated January 13, 2026 19:05

Plesk for Linux kb: technical ABT: Group A

Applicable to:

Plesk for Linux

Symptoms

An entire website does not work or images for newly uploaded posts could not be displayed:

CONFIG_TEXT: 403 Forbidden
SELinux policy is in enforcing state:

# getenforce
Enforcing
psa-selinux package may be absent. The command below returns nothing:

# rpm -qa | grep psa-selinux

Errors like below may be found in /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/error_log:

PLESK_INFO: [core:error] [pid 26162:tid 140174260410112] (13)Permission denied: [client 203.0.113.2:37894] AH00035: access to /favicon.ico denied (filesystem path '/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/favicon.ico') because search permissions are missing on a component of the path, referer: http://example.com/wp-login.php
audit2allow shows the following info:

PLESK_INFO: type=AVC msg=audit(1520785969.954:4592): avc: denied { getattr } for pid=26162 comm="httpd" path="/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/favicon.ico" dev="sda2" ino=2229363 scontext=system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:admin_home_t:s0 tclass=file
Was caused by:
Missing type enforcement (TE) allow rule.

You can use audit2allow to generate a loadable module to allow this access.

Cause

Invalid SELinux security context. For example, SELinux security contexts for the uploaded images can show:

# ls -Z /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/image.jpg
system_u:object_r:initrc_tmp_t:s0 /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/image.jpg

Resolution

Connect to the server through SSH;
Install psa-selinux package if it is missing:

# yum install psa-selinux
Restore broken SELinux security contexts for the affected website files:

# restorecon -R /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/