Drupal and Access Denied

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

So, for some reason, my Drupal site for the scal project (Simple Javascript Calendar based on Prototype) decided to start showing "Access Denied" to every non-registered visitor. This happened around midnight two days ago and the only reason I knew about it was that a forum poster was kind enough to drop me a line -- thanks, Rafael!
There was no obvious reason for the problem. All of the permissions looked good. Everything was set as it had been for months. However, when I de-authorized anonymous users from access to content and then reauthorized them again everything started working fine.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Perhaps too simple. However, this is exactly what I did:

Unchecked the box for "access content" under Admin:User Management:Access Control:Node
Clicked "Save Permissions"
Rechecked the box for "access content" under Admin:User Management:Access Control:Node
Clicked "Save Permissions"

Everything works! No more "access denied!"

I read quite a few Drupal threads about this "access denied" problem but no one seemed to go about doing the same thing. It seems very odd for Drupal to suddenly forget about permissions, but truth is stranger than fiction. Guess I'd better think about the Drupal 6.0 upgrade!

Hope this helps!