Apache: Doc-root of Virtual hosts in

Hi,

Problem:
I installed Apache (1.3.14 on RH7 Linux, kernel 2.4.0-ac11)
configured it for multiple v-hosts. Until now, no problem.
I have some users (including myself) who want to host 1 or more TLDs on my server. So it would be great if I could configure the v-hosts to have their document root on /home/<username>/www
I tried this, but I always get a 403 if I go to the v-hosts URL. If I put the website under /var/www/html/<username> (and ofcourse change it in httpd.conf!) then there is no problem ... the only thing I can think of, is that apache doesn't have rights to access /home/<username>/www, but I can't think of a solution to fix my problem. (I want the doc-root in the home-dir (and 1 Unix-user per website) so users kan change their website using ftp (proftpd chroot'ed to the user's home-dir (=can't have a symlink to /var/www/html/<username> ))

Who can help me? (I'm sure there are solutions for this problem, but right now, I just can't think of any (nor find any on the web!)

Thanks,

Bugger.

>>If I put the website under /var/www/html/<username>

What is the ls -Al output (don't tell me what permission you think it is) of /var/www/html/username?

How about the output of /home/username/www as well?

In your current httpd.conf, is there any UserDir directive somewhere?

What is the User and Group in your httpd.conf?

>What is the ls -Al output (don't tell me what permission you think it is) of /var/www/html/username?

[root@devet001 /root]# ls -Al /var/www/html/
drwxr-xr-x 2 devnet users 82 Feb 1 21:04 devnet
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 59 Feb 1 20:27 linuxnet
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 494 Feb 2 13:50 phpnet

(-> All 3 websites work fine like this)


>How about the output of /home/username/www as well?

[root@devet001 /root]# ls -Al /home/devnet/
...
drwxr-xr-x 2 devnet users 57 Feb 1 16:20 www


>In your current httpd.conf, is there any UserDir directive somewhere?

UserDir www


>What is the User and Group in your httpd.conf?

User apache
Group apache

>>I can think of, is that apache doesn't have rights to access /home/<username>/www
Based on your setup, user apache has access to /home/devnet/www given you have drwxr-xr-x for www directory for apache user to access.
The problem could be the following block:

<Directory /home/*/www>
..no affect here
..no affect here
<Limit xxx yyy zzz> #problem here
..
..
</Limit>
<LimitExcept aaa bbb ccc> #could be another problem here
..
..
</LimitExcept>
</Directory>

So it's not permission problem with your directories/files but a tiny misconfiguration of your httpd.conf
Check out -> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#limitexcept

Keep in mind, I assume that Directory block above is within a <VirtualHost NameVirtualHost.ip.address.here>
DocumentRoot /home/username/www
ServerName that.vhost.com
..
..
..
</VirtualHost>

Note, which this setting, your UserDir directive is no longer needed. You have hardcoded your httpd.conf and have told apache to use /home/username/www as the docroot of particular vhost.

OK, I found the solution for my problem: the home-dir of a user is created with following rights: drwx------

I changed that to drwxr-xr-x (might be a bit more "insecure", however, all users on my box are "trusted users" ... I know who they are, and those I don't know don't get shell-acces! ;-) )

I do thank you "Mr. FreeBSD" for your help!

bugger.

>>I changed that to drwxr-xr-x (might be a bit more
>>"insecure", however, all users on my box are "trusted users"

755 is the default setting for FreeBSD at the very least. How insecure that might be?