Apache help

OK, this is driving me crazy, and hopefully someone will be able to help.

My DocumentRoot is /var/www/html
I've mounted a new disk to /var/www/html2

Using virtual hosts, I pointed a test subdomain to /var/www/html2, but no matter what I do I get a 403 Forbidden error.

/var/www/html2 is owned by user/group apache.

Here is my Virtual host entry:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName www3.somedomain.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/html2/www3
ServerAdmin sandman@somedomain.org
ErrorLog logs/www3_error.log
CustomLog logs/www3_access.log common
AddType application/x-httpd-php3 .php3
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
</VirtualHost>

My virtual hosts hosted in /var/www/html work flawlessly.

Is it possible to have more than one DocumentRoot, or have apache recognize more than one path?

Could it be the asterisk in the VirtualHost directive? Or, have you checked the rest of the conf file for a switch that turns virtual hosting on? Seems like there's something like that, though it's been a while since I've done any apache config. Maybe something like:

NameVirtualHost *

Or it could be that even though the drive is mounted and appears to be owned by the correct user, there's something funky going on with permissions. Try pointing the virtual host that currently works to that directory and see if you get the forbidden error. If so, it's probably a permissions error; if not, it's probably an apache conf error.

I'm running roughly 15 other Virtual hosts, all configured the same way, and they work (but they're all hosted on /var/www/html).

I did try to move an existing directory from /var/www/html to /var/www/html2 and still get the forbidden error. This is not a permissions issue however, or a problem with the mount. Even though my virtual host points to /var/www/html2, that path is not in the apache search path, hence why the forbidden error.

I did try to add a 2nd DocumentRoot /var/www/html2 to apache.conf but that made no difference.

That you moved an existing directory to /var/www/html2 and got the same error would seem to indicate that there is a problem with the mount or with the permissions, wouldn't it? What kind of mount is it? This is probably a no-brainer, but just to cover bases, I'm assuming www3 on that mounted drive exists and is readable/executable, owned by apache, etc.? At any rate, it doesn't sound like you've got an apache config issue if you've got 15 other virtual hosts working. To my knowledge, adding a second DocumentRoot outside the virtual host won't do anything for you. Just for kicks, have you tried symlinking to the mounted disk? That probably won't help any.

OK, this is pointing more and more to Apache not scanning or allowing /var/www/html2.

I renamed the mount point and created a simlink and it works that way. It is very messy however

ln -s /mnt/otherhtml /var/www/html/html2

And changed my VirtualHost entry to point to /var/www/html/html2

So I know it's not a permissions problem or a mount issue as previously suggested.

it's a permission problem trust me, i found out the hard way and i had to manually edit thousands of files just to get it to work on my redhat machine

Yeah, it does sound sort of like a permissions/mount issue to me. Trying to point to the mount itself, you get an error. Make a symlink on the local filesystem pointing to the mount and your problem's solved. Conclusion: You've got permission to read the local symlink; apache doesn't care that it's a symlink and just reads its contents like a regular old directory instead of treating it like a mounted drive. I'd wager at least a nickel that this is a permissions/mount issue and not an apache config issue.

/var/www/html2 is owned by user/group apache, so the perms should be good.

I also did the following test: created a /bin directory on the /var/www/html2 mount. I tossed in a binary. Added /var/www/html2/bin in my path. I can then execute the binary without any problems (binary owned by apache/apache, and ran as user apache).

still confused....

What kind of drive are you mounting? I found the following link, which may provide some insight:

http://www.mail-archive.com/sharity...t/msg00306.html

It points out that when mounting Windows drives, the permissions are mounted-user-based rather than Linux-permissions-based. So you can chmod all you want, but the permissions are based on who mounted the drive. So if you mounted the drive as root, then apache might not be able to access the drive. (And a Web/cron environment is different from a command line environment, so being able to execute a binary from the command line may not be the best test).

The reason I've thought all along it might be a mount/permissions issue is that my Linux desktop is mounted on some samba shares, and I can change permissions on those shares all I want from my side, but if I'm mounted as a user besides the user I am when trying to update files, I don't have permission on the files. Seems similar. I don't mean to flog that horse; it's all I can come up with, I'm afraid.

The entire drive was formatted as an ext2 partition.

It's being mounted by fstab and mtab.

Geez. I've got nothing. Go with the symlink for now, I guess.

Make sure that the folder,subfolder, etc, is all owned by the group/user that apache runs as, otherwise it WONT work

I had some problems with this previously myself, let me go home and I'll post what I had to do for mine later tonight...

ok change the user and group name to the main person who will be using the server. ex (Sandman71,Sandman71) now be sure to be logged in as sandman71 for this to work. open up the terminal screen and type this in...


chmod -R 0755 and it shall gives that particular user rights to read and write to that directory

hopefully dhouston or someone else can explain this better

Well it's 18 months later and I'm sure your problem's gone away by now, but for the benefit of anyone who, like me, had the same problem and found this thread while googling for possible solutions, here's what I did to fix it.

I found this <Directory> block in commonhttpd.conf, an Include file called by httpd2.conf:



Now, I'd set up a document root for a second virtual host, /var/www/groover, so clearly it wasn't covered by this section of config - as indeed your own /var/www/html2 wouldn't be.

Duplicating the above code in the config file, for /var/www/groover made the 403 error go away for the virtual host. Clearly, by default, Apache is designed to withhold content from document roots that aren't explicitly permitted by the section of code.

Regards
James