Apache virtual host problem

[reeksy]

Hi

Im just setting up a development platform on Fedora. I'm stuck whilst trying to set up a Virtual Host outside of the document root (/var/www). Does anyone know how I would achieve this?

Here's my httpd.conf:

NameVirtualHost *
Listen 80

<VirtualHost *>
   ServerName localhost
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost test.local.com>
        ServerName test.local.com
        DocumentRoot /home/jon/www/test.local.com/
        <Directory "/home/jon/www/test.local.com/">
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Navigating to http://localhost/ works OK, but if i navigate to http://test.local.com/ i receive a 403 error with 'You don't have permission to access / on this server.'

Incidently i've mapped 127.0.0.1 to test.local.com within my /etc/hosts file and /home/jon/www/test.local.com/ has been given 777 permissions! Apache is running as apache:www-data.

Regards,
Jon

[scottro]

I see on a working configuration (in FreeBSD--and I'm not sure if I researched this, or if it was the default), I have

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.test.local.com:80

DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/testlocal/
<Directory /usr/local/www/testlocal>
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

So, the main differences that I see are the listing of 80 in the particular VirtualServer directory.

I don't know if that will help or not, but shucks, it's worth a shot till an Apache ace sees this and gives you a more intelligent answer.

[reeksy]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I've had no luck with this though! I'm still getting permission denied! Any other suggestions!?

Jon

[scottro]

The only other things I can think of are the default permissions on the directories and files.

On FreeBSD, the directories owned by root, group wheel 744 permissions and the html files are 644. That's pretty standard, I think. You could try setting up as a non-virtual directory, and if that works, take it from there, but these are just stabs in the dark.

[reeksy]

Awesome! I've cracked it:

Here's the explanation:
By default SELinux will not serve pages from your home directory but it's easy to change the security context of the directory to allow this without turning off SELinux protection for the HTTPD daemon. All commands must be run as root, assuming the folder is called public_html in your home directory:

$ /usr/sbin/setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs 1
$ chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /home/username/public_html

Case closed

[scottro]

Good for you. We should have thought of that first.