Forbidden Error 403 - Unable to access web pages

[skyeman]

On rebuilding an ubuntu "perfect server" 9.10 (Karmic) (ISPConfig-3) mail and web server, after a hdd failure, I'm encountering difficulties serving my web pages. The browser reports either 403 Forbidden errors, or 403 Forbidden and/or 404 Document not Found.

The server error log reports:

[crit] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] (13)Permission denied: /var/www/mydomain.com/web/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

Prior to this error, I was opening pages ok, right up until I used ISPConfig to create a sub-domain with a redirect path instruction. After that, nothing would open at all: http://mydomain.com , http://www.mydomain.com, http://mydomain.com/path-to-subdom-index.html , etc. All of them get 403's now, whereas before using ISPConfig sub-domain tool, those would open content.

It's baffling, because the prior server also used ISPConfig 3 and ubuntu 9.10, and I don't recall encountering these problems.

Any help deeply appreciated...

Elliott