If you have installed phpMyAdmin in your linux server (centos/RHEL/debian), and tried to access phpMyAdmin in most cases you will get this 403 forbidden error. I have seen this issue very often if you are installing phpmyadmin using yum or by apt-get. By default phpmyadmin installed path is /usr/share/phpmyadmin and the apache configuration file is located in /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf.

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

To fix:

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

Remove or comment the first two lines in bold.


#Order Allow,Deny
#Deny from all

Allow from 127.0.0.1

Restart the apache server.

service httpd restart

Once this is done, you should be able to see phpmyadmin working by pointing your browser to http://ipaddress/phpmyadmin

This method worked for me and leave a comment here if there is an issue.