"Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible..."

Apache 2 refused to serve pages with that claim in the error_log (Suse 10.1). I had tried everything (permissions, ownership, etc.) - nothing worked. My httpd.conf piece looked really perfect:

<Directory "/srv/www/htdocs">
                Options FollowSymlinks
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
</Directory>

and no success. Then, I found the line in the httpd.conf:

Include /etc/apache2/default-server.conf

Yes, yes, that include file contained a configuration for the document root, and certainly overwrote my settings. So, if your settings look really good, and the symlink problem still exists - look for such an include.

The problem seems to be obvious - but search Google for it, and you may be surprised...