Apache2 refuses to follow symlinks to homedir

[randomstuff]

I have just wasted one hour trying to get apache2 to show the files that I have in a folder inside my homedir. I am not using the server edition btw, plain regular 7.10 Desktop, 32bit.

I have tried everything:
- setting the document root to be the folder in homedir as well as leaving it at /var/www
- generously setting "FollowSymlinks" options for all Directories in the default host
- applying 755 permissions to the folder and its contents
- added .htaccess file in /var/www specifying "Options +FollowSymlinks"
- set "AllowOverride All" or all Directories in the default host

It just won't work. I refuse to copy my web development projects to the stupid /var/www folder - which is not part of the /home/partition and thus requires extra backup measures.

What can I do to make it work?

[floydwilde]

I have my home directory on a raid1 partition, and var mounted on a non raid partition, so I also did not want to put my http docs in /var/www. /var is for logs and other things I never look at.

the only things i changed in /etc/apache2/site-available/default were:

DocumentRoot /home/john/Working/pub_html/

<Directory /home/john/Working/pub_html/>

and it works fine for me. Shouldn't have to add a .htaccess anywhere. thats just crazy.

oh yeah and don't forget to restart Apache.

[randomstuff]

It still won't work. I keep getting 403 error messages, even though everybody has permissions to read the directory.

[randomstuff]

Ok, I don't know what's wrong with my system, but now it's completely screwed up.

Even after selecting all "apache2" packages in synaptic, selecting "remove completely" and then reinstalling, I cannot even get the default /var/www/ directory to work any more. (error log says: "[Sun May 25 17:39:10 2008] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /htdocs")

I have also tried configuring apache through webmin, but it seems to do no better than me.

Trying to get the userdir mod to work has also failed in all attempts, using webmin, a2enmod, manually symlinking - nothing works.

Could this be related to group/user permissions? what can I possibly do to get my webserver up and running? It's not really supposed to be *this* hard, is it?

[MJN]

Post your config then we can take a look.

Mathew

[randomstuff]

I have uploaded most of my /etc/apache2/ directory contents to my webserver.

I doubt it'll help much though, since I have reinstalled several times and tried many things, without any luck.

so I suspect the problem must be more general to my system. I just have no idea where to look.

Thank you for trying to help though.

[MJN]

Your config is a little confusing given you've got multiple webmin-created sites however given that sites-enabled/000-default is empty we'll concentrate on the only other enabled site - sites-enabled/webmin.1211729846.conf:

<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot /var/www/apache2-default
<Directory "/var/www/apache2-default">
allow from all
Options +Indexes
</Directory>
UserDir "public_html"
</VirtualHost>

Change DocumentRoot to the directory in the home directory you want to serve, and edit the <Directory> directive to suit. Then make this web directory, and all parent directories, have read/execute permissions for Apache (user 'www-data') and see how you go...

Mathew

[Surtsey]

I was having a problem that sounded quite similar (I found this thread searching for a fix). It turned out one of the parent directories of what I was trying to ask Apache to open had slightly barring permissions. Frustratingly simple problem after all the irritation it caused.

Cheers.

[f37u5g0d]

I had this similar problem. Create a "htdocs" folder in /. You can make it a link to any folder you like. Put your website in htdocs or in the dir that htdocs points to. This is what I had to do to get my website up. I figuered it out by reading the /var/logs/apache2/error log. It is weird and I am trying to figure it out right now.

[windependence]

FYI, Apache 1.3 uses a default document root of /var/www/htdocs. This is probably what you were seeing.

-Tim