[KLUG Members] Apache Forbidden error accessing a directory

[Patrick Mc Govern]

I am running Mandrake 8.2 on my home PC.  I have several php applications 
like xoops and phpbb in my document root (/var/www/html) that I can access 
just fine with a browser.  

The problem is that I created a directory named "HP" and I get the following 
error when I open this directory from a browser (http://localhost/HP):

Forbidden You don't have permission to access /HP/ on this server.

It has the unix directory permissions set to 755, just like the other 
directories.  I tried an .htaccess file within the HP directory but I get a 
configuration error, probably due to incorrect syntax.

I have not seen this issue on previous versions of Mandrake.  What's the best 
way to fix this access problem?