On my test environment, I had an permission denied issue with a simple HTML file. Shit all permissions looking good … but wait a minute SELinux was activated and I did not want to disable it. Here is the simple solution.

Example

# check SELinux status
$ sestatus

# check SELinux security context
$ ls -lahZ /var/www/html/
...
-rw-r--r--. root root unconfined_u:object_r:user_tmp_t:s0 demo.html
-rw-r--r--. root root unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0 index.html
...

# change the SELinux security context (use RFILE's security context)
$ chcon --reference /var/www/html/index.html /var/www/html/demo.html

Cool … the problem is solved. All pages are visible without permission issues. It also works recursively if several files are affected.

# change security context recursive
$ chcon -Rv --type=httpd_sys_content_t /var/www/html