Cloudfront gives "Access denied" when accessing index document

Question

I have an S3 website configured to be used as a static website, and a Cloudfront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin.

My index files are called index and I have specified this as the index files in both the bucket configuration and the Cloudfront distribution configuration.

However if I go to https://example.com/directory/ I get an error document as follows, where the RequestID and HostID change on each request:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Error><Code>AccessDenied</Code><Message>Access Denied</Message><RequestId>7F09A18821FE70FD</RequestId><HostId>H5OR+AZpNSGlhrUX1ECegTbWkio728A1MIdGkO4bkCZIJa/XQ6Uv7Hu0GgNgyxL+snerPPDnzr8=</HostId></Error>

If I go to https://example.com/directory/index then the page shows correctly.

If I access the website from either the cloudfront URL or the S3 website endpoint, rather than my custom domain, then the problem does not happen.

How can I get the directory index pages to be served correctly when accessing the S3 bucket?

s3 website hosting serve only .html content. U can server as example.com/directory/index/ but inside index/index.html folder has to present for other folder. — Avinash Dalvi, Dec 23 '19 at 04:46
@aviboy2006 S3 can serve whatever file names you want, with whatever MIME types you want. — Mark Fisher, Dec 23 '19 at 09:41
Agree. Try this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50299204/receive-accessdenied-when-trying-to-access-a-reload-or-refresh-or-one-in-new-tab/50302276#50302276 this setting — Avinash Dalvi, Dec 23 '19 at 09:44
Please provide the entire error response, not just "Access Denied." — Michael - sqlbot, Dec 23 '19 at 11:38
@hephalump Unfortunately I don't want to do that for reasons. — Mark Fisher, Jan 03 '20 at 12:42
@aviboy2006 That is for a different use case. I don't want to show the same page for whichever URL the user visits. I just want to change the name of my index files. — Mark Fisher, Jan 03 '20 at 12:44

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 03 '20 at 12:48

Changing the origin for the distribution from <bucket-name>.s3.amazonaws.com to <bucket-name>.s3-website.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com fixed the issue.

Unfortunately when I started typing in the dropdown in the Origin settings, Amazon started to suggest S3 buckets, and it suggested the bucket using the first format.

Cloudfront gives "Access denied" when accessing index document

1 Answers1