I've got a question about the UserDir directive of apache 1.3.26.

After install the welcome page mentions the folowing

User directories are enabled, and user documents will be looked for in the public_html directory of the users' homes. These dirs should be under /home, and users will not be able to symlink to files they don't own.

Reading the UserDir directive info at apache.org:
UserDir public_html -> ~bob/public_html/one/two.html

So this means that I can acces files in /home/user/public_html/ over the web by requesting http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~user, right? In my case that doesn't work. This is what I get:

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~user -> this page cannot be displayed
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~user/ -> acces forbidden
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~user/index.html -> acces forbidden

Just in case, standard httpd.conf contains this, which seems ok to me.

LoadModule userdir_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/mod_userdir.so

<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
UserDir public_html
</IfModule>

Did I make wrong assumptions or is something wrong?

Gilion

chmod 711/home/user and /home/user/public_html

i think u have to give 755 to public_html, as 'apache' should have executable rights on the public_html directory.
711 is okay for user directory.

also u should have proper


<Directory /home/*/public_html>
settings
in my case it looks like
<Directory /home/*/public_html>
AllowOverride none
Options All MultiViews
<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>

Auch, it was a simple chmod-ing isue.



Thanks for the tip. As I'm moving forward to securing the server, I am still interested in the directory settings. I've added mine below. Can you briefly address the differences and explain which one is safer?

Gilion

<Directory /home/*/public_html>
AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
<Limit GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE PATCH PROPPATCH MKCOL COPY MOVE LOCK UNLOCK>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Limit>
</Directory>

well it depends on ur n/w requirement
1)AllowOverride should be none if u dont want to override certain default settings, specified in httpd.conf
2)I have selected All options, because in my case all the options are imp, MultiViews has to be selected separately anyway
3) Limit part is similar in both the cases, in my case i denied all other commands except few imp commands