title: Mongrel & Apache - 403 error
body: <p>I'm trying to get my rails application up and running with Rails and Mongrel. I keep getting a 403 permission denied Apache error when pointing my browser to the application.</p>
  
  <p>I can confirm that my mongrel_rails instances are running (ports 3001, 3002 and 3003).</p>
  
  <p>Here is my vhost.conf:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;Proxy balancer://mongrelcluster&gt;
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3001
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3002
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3003
  &lt;/Proxy&gt;
  
  &lt;VirtualHost *:80&gt;
    ServerName subdomain.domain.co.uk
    ServerAlias subdomain.domain.co.uk
    ProxyPass / balancer://mongrelcluster/
    ProxyPassReverse / balancer://mongrelcluster/
    ProxyPreserveHost on
  &lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I figure I must be missing something here. I've tried adding a DocumentRoot directive within to my virtual host which points to the root of my application, but to no avail.</p>
  
  <p>Here is some output from my mongrel log (RE port 3003):</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>** Signals ready.  TERM => stop.  USR2 => restart.  INT => stop (no restart).
    ** Rails signals registered.  HUP => reload (without restart).  It might not work well.
    ** Mongrel 1.2.0.pre2 available at 0.0.0.0:3003 2012-08-08 10:32:14 +0000: Error calling Dispatcher.dispatch #
    /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/mongrel-1.2.0.pre2/lib/mongrel/rails.rb:76:in
    <code>block in process' &lt;internal:prelude&gt;:10:in</code>synchronize'
    /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/mongrel-1.2.0.pre2/lib/mongrel/rails.rb:74:in
    <code>process'
    /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/mongrel-1.2.0.pre2/lib/mongrel.rb:165:in
    </code>block in process_client'
    /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/mongrel-1.2.0.pre2/lib/mongrel.rb:164:in
    <code>each'
    /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/mongrel-1.2.0.pre2/lib/mongrel.rb:164:in
    </code>process_client'
    /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/mongrel-1.2.0.pre2/lib/mongrel.rb:291:in
    `block (2 levels) in run'</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I can see there is an error with dispatch somewhere (this error is only prevalent on the third and final port).
  I have run</p>
  
  <pre><code>gem install dispatch
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>yet I'm still getting this issue. I'm unaware if the problem is with apache, mongrel, or both.</p>
  
  <p>Any tips?</p>