From Fedora Project wiki : A security context , or security label , is the mechanism used by SELinux to classify resources, such as processes and files, on a SELinux-enabled system. This context allows SELinux to enforce rules for how and by whom a given resource should be accessed. A security context is typically shown as a string consisting of three or four words. Each word specifies a different component of the security context, namely, the user , role , type , and level of that file or process . Each word is separated by a colon. Use the -Z switch to display security context info. Display security context for Apache files: $ ls -Z /var/www/ drwxr-xr-x. root root system_... Display security for files under...

You get "permission denied" error from Apache HTTPD for a page. And you checked file/directory permissions (the whole directory path, not just the file) and everything in httpd.conf . If everything seemed right, then SELinux may be blocking the access. Open /var/log/httpd/error_log , you may see a line like this: [Wed Apr 13 15:50:35 2011] [notice] SELinux poli... These are the steps to fix: If the directory resides in a user home directory: # setsebool -P httpd_read_user_content 1 Create a policy package from the audit log: # grep httpd /var/log/audit/audit.log | audit2allo... Apply the policy package just created # semodule -i mypol.pp Restart apache httpd: # apachectl restart