Apache DocumentRoot problem

elliottsb · 02-20-2005, 10:52 PM

I just completed my first install of Apache 2 on Fedora Core 3. I tested the server after the install and it worked. Then, in the httpd.conf file I changed DocumentRoot and Directory to "/public_html/www" and restarted the server. It apparently didn't start because when I ran apachectl status I get "ERROR at dump.c:188: Connection refused." When I change DocumentRoot and Directory back to "/var/www/html" Apache works again.

Now, let me tell you about /public_html. It is /dev/sda1 (SATA drive) and has a single partition formatted as ext3 and mounted as /public_html. /public_html and /public_html/www both have 755 as permissions.

Is this anything that someone else has run across? I googled on this for a long while and came up with nothing. I didn't see anything in the logs either, but I might not be looking in the right place. I hope I'm not missing something simple here...

linuxxed · 02-21-2005, 02:39 AM

When you start apache - does it really start? Assuming you've started on 80 port then what does this command tell you

lsof -i:80

What do you see when you run the command

apachectl -k start

Can you display the contents of

ls /public_html/www

elliottsb · 02-21-2005, 09:16 AM

Thanks for your reply linuxxed.

If I leave DocumentRoot at /var/www/html (RPM install default) and start apache with apachectl -k start, lsof -i:80 yields the following:

Quote:

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
httpd 11421 root 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11422 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11423 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11424 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11425 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11426 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11427 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11428 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd 11429 apache 3u IPv6 274175 TCP *:http (LISTEN)

When I change DocumentRoot to /public_html/www, apachectl -k start and lsof -i:80 display nothing.

As for the contents of /public_html/www, they are:

Quote:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 11 10:38 cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 20 12:33 error
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 11 10:38 html
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 20 13:06 icons
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 64 Feb 21 00:35 index.html
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Feb 20 12:32 manual
drwxr-xr-x 2 webalizer root 4096 Feb 20 02:15 usage

I just copied this stuff from the default directory. I don't know if it is necessary.

bathory · 02-21-2005, 09:49 AM

Take a look at your apache error.log to see why it doesn't start. I guess it has something to do with mod_userdir, and if so edit your apache config file (usually httpd.conf) to change the UserDir directory to the new location.

elliottsb · 02-21-2005, 10:56 AM

Thanks for the suggestion bathory, but I'm not using user directories. I'm trying to modify where the documents are stored at the high level.

Now I've taken a different approach and came up with some interesting results. I left the global DocumentRoot and Directory alone. I added the following in the VirtualHost section:

Code:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.gunrdev.com
  ServerAlias gunrdev.com *.gunrdev.com
  DocumentRoot "/public_html/www"
  <Directory "/public_html/www">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
  ErrorLog logs/www.gunrdev.com-error_log
  LogLevel debug
  CustomLog logs/www.gunrdev.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Now apache will start, but I get the good old 403 error. However, like I've said before, the permissions for /public_html and /public_html/www are 755. The actual error message is as follows:

Quote:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

elliottsb · 02-21-2005, 01:25 PM

I've tried several more things now. First of all, I realized that I can't use Vhosts since I want to use SSL. So I commented all of that section out.

Next I tried to get sneaky. I changed the DocumentRoot and Directory back to /var/www/html (default). Then I created /var/www/htmllink, which is a symbolic link to /public_html/www. Then I ran apachectl startssl and renamed /var/www/html.link to /var/www/html and renamed the actual folder /var/www/html to /var/www/html.old.

Well, it was sneaky, but it didn't work.

What it seems to boil down to is that I can't change DocumentRoot to a location on a physical drive other than the one where apache is installed.

elliottsb · 02-24-2005, 09:40 PM

Just in case anyone runs into this problem in the future...

I submitted this as bug 33679 and got a resolution. Turns out it was SELinux that was preventing the directory change. The resolution was to

Code:

chcon -R system_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t /my/new/docroot

or turn off the SELinux policy for httpd using:

Code:

setsebool -P httpd_disable_trans=1