I have been working through some setup issues on a server with apache 2.0. Only think I have changed in the httpd.conf file is User_dir and added index.php to it for the searching. when doing localhost/~user/ everything works fine.
DocumentRoot in the .Conf I left default. etc/www/html. So when you run just localhost you get the default page. However I place a simple index.html that contained only hello its working and It still gets the default page. If I call the file such as localhost/index.html I get page can not be found. permission is set to 755? Any ideas of why its not acknowledging that there are files in the DocumentRoot.

No one has any idea?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux Server and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

What log message to you get in your error_log file?

Normally Default for apache is /var/www/html.

It can also be set in 2 places and is by default in your conf file.

You should see this line:
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"

Then you should see this line:
<Directory "/var/www/html">

Make sure both of those are set to /etc/www/html or whatever you would like your DocRoot to be.