user permissions

[Benjamin Ruston]

eoghan wrote:
> Hi
> I have a user that I use for doing the odd bit of work on my 
> freebsd-6.1-RELEASE machine.
> I wanted to set apache to work from:
> /home/user/public_html/
> instead of the default location. I can create these folders no 
> problems but i have to do it as root:
> mkdir /home/user/public_html/
> How do I ensure my user can copy files from gui (gnome) to this 
> folder. Im told I dont have permission to copy to this folder.
> Also apache tells me I dont have permission when I change the 
> DocumentRoot to point to /home/user/public_html/
> Just not sure how to go about giving a user permissions on 
> files/folders I want them to be able to edit. Any pointers?
> Thanks
> Eoghan
To change a directory ownership use chown user /home/user/public_html 
obviously substituting user for the desired username. As for your 
public_html issues, you need to search your apache configuration file 
for the UserDir module section and if it's disabled, enable it. Mine 
looks like this:

<IfModule userdir_module>
    UserDir public_html
    UserDir disabled root toor daemon operator bin tty kmem games news 
man sshd bind proxy _pflogd _dhcp uucp pop www nobody$
#
# Control access to UserDir directories.  The following is an example
# for a site where these directories are restricted to read-only.
#
   <Directory /home/*/public_html>
     AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes
     Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
     <Limit GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
     </Limit>
     <LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND>
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
     </LimitExcept>
   </Directory>
</IfModule>