Arch Linux

creese

Member

Registered: 2012-07-21

Posts: 45

[Solved] Website Doesn't Work on My Machine Unless I Add “www”...

Today, I tried navigating to a website and was met with the following error:

Server Error
403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.

This is strange because I can access the site from different computers. However, if I add "www." to the beginning of the URL, the website works on my machine too. Could something in my machine be misconfigured?

I'm running Arch Linux and Firefox.

In case you're wondering, the website is dhcs.ca.gov.

Last edited by creese (2021-02-03 22:06:22)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,623

Re: [Solved] Website Doesn't Work on My Machine Unless I Add “www”...

Do you block redirects?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1223556

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progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,321

Re: [Solved] Website Doesn't Work on My Machine Unless I Add “www”...

That URL is badly configured and firefox might be set up to automatically choose https if that is available. You can probably cache the redirect by opening the http:// url once.

A test with curl results in:

http://dhcs.ca.gov -- redirect to https://www.dhcs.ca.gov
https://dhcs.ca.gov -- error 403
http://www.dhcs.ca.gov -- redirect to https://www.dhcs.ca.gov

Last edited by progandy (2021-02-03 21:49:40)

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| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' | alias ENGLISH='LANG=C.UTF-8 ' |

creese

Member

Registered: 2012-07-21

Posts: 45

Re: [Solved] Website Doesn't Work on My Machine Unless I Add “www”...

I just tried your solution and it works:
- Navigating to dhcs.ca.gov redirects to www.dhcs.ca.gov.
- When set to "HTTPS-Only Mode", Firefox insists on using HTTPS when available.
- HTTPS is available but is misconfigured on the server.

I can only disable "HTTPS-Only Mode" globally so this isn't a fix, but at least I understand what's happening now.