apache on centos 5.6 gives me permissions denied error
Solution 1:
Usually that comes from Selinux not giving access to the folder. do
ls -alZ /var/www/
and if the html folder doesn't have the context system_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t, fix it with chcon
chcon -v -R --type=httpd_sys_content_t /var/www/html
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/SELinux