Apache User Directories problem in Fedora 5 Core upgrade

I have confronted all the usual issues in trying to correct this problem. I have recently upgraded to Fedora 5.

There are three previous users with public_html directories that can be reached easily, but when I tried to create a new user, I get the usual

I once had the problem in a previous installation and simply disabled SELinux to fix it after posting the problem here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...00#post1870600

I have chmod'ed permissions of all the files to 777. After reintroducing SELinux I have tried all the usual chcon command as explained here,

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...56#post1831456

and here,

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...04#post1355004

If I ls -lZ those new /NewUser/public_html/ directories, I see the usual indication SELinux permissions:

rwxrwxrwx MyNewUser MyNewUser user_ubject_r:httpd_sys_content_t public_html

What is going on? How do I correct this problem?

The httpd error and access logs just repeat the 403 error. Where else do I look for clues as to what is going on?

Did you enable the homedirs boolean (setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs true) along with doing chcon?

Do you see any "avc" or other selinux-related messages in the system logs?

Yes, I tried setsebool like you and others have posted before I tried the other command that changes directories directly. I have also tried disabling SELinux and this doesn't change anything like it did the first time I had problems with it.

I have tried all the /var/httpd/logs. Is there any other place I should look?

Here is what fixed it:

Why?? Why does the user's root directory have to have access permission, when all you want is access to the /public_html folder inside of it? I'm not sure if I like that. Why is it supposed to be that way?

You shouldn't have to do that. The dirs (inicluding public_html) should have 755 permissions while the content itself should be 744. Also make sure that the UserDir directive is set to public_html in the Apache config. You never really want to set anything with global write-execute as it's a big security risk, especially for anything that Apache has access to. If you are still having problems, post the perms on everything from / to the public_html and the content itself.

This is also a good tutorial that I found worked on getting home_dirs working with Apache under Fedora:
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinu...r-homedir.html

I ommitted "755" in the above code. I have also found if I changed the content of /public_html to 744, I can't reach my HTML, which seems kind of strange since that allows read access to non-owners.

From the apache config:

#"UserDir: The name of the directory that is appended onto a user's home
# directory if a ~user request is received.
#
# The path to the end user account 'public_html' directory must be
# accessible to the webserver userid. This usually means that ~userid
# must have permissions of 711, ~userid/public_html must have permissions
# of 755, and documents contained therein must be world-readable.
# Otherwise, the client will only receive a "403 Forbidden" message.

The execute bit allows Apache to list the contents of that dir, but to be honest I'm not really sure exactly why it needs to do that. Possibly so it knows what content is there before serving requests.