User Directories On FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE

[Chuck Swiger]

Hi--

On Feb 18, 2010, at 11:31 AM, Programmer In Training wrote:
> On 02/18/10 13:21, Chuck Swiger wrote:
> <snip>
>> Apache is going to look up the home directories specified in
>> /etc/passwd via getpwent() or similar.  If allowed, it would chase a
> 
> Then it shouldn't even bother with having a setting for specifying the
> path to user directories (or at least that behavior should be documented).

Whether the path to user home directories is honored or whether Apache goes somewhere else for HTTP requests for /~user/foo.html depends on what you set UserDir to:

  http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_userdir.html

It's possible that using:

  UserDir /usr/home/*/public_html

....will do better, if that is the actual path being used.

>> symlink from /home to under /usr/home, but SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is
>> likely to matter here.
> 
> See, now that's helpful. Thank you. No one suggested that. Will add it
> and see if that changes anything.

I suspect you already have it, according to what you'd shown in the prior mail.  Using FollowSymLinks instead might be necessary depending on what you do with UserDir.
 
>> You should be getting more useful information in the Apache error
>> log...perhaps /var/log/httpd-error.log, depending on whether you used
>> the Apache from ports or rolled your own.
>> 
>> Regards,
> 
> I rolled my own because I couldn't even get Apache from ports to start
> with the default http.conf file provided.

Hmm, unexpected.  What did apachectl configtest say?

> I think the log level is set to warn, I'll chase that down, too. More
> useful information is good.
> 
> Thank you so much for the help. This has been bothering me for almost a
> two weeks now.

You're most welcome...

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck