Apache 13 permission denied in user's home directory

Question

Hi,

My friend's website was working fine until he moved the document root from /var/www/xxx to /home/user/xxx

Apache give 13 permission denied error messages when we try to access the site via a web browser.

The site is configured as a virtual directory. All the Apache configurations were unchanged (except for the directory change).

We tried to chmod 777 /home/user/xxx, chown apache /home/user/xxx. But they didn't work.

Is there some kind of security feature set on the user's home directories? The server OS is CentOS (Godaddy VPS).

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

Answer 1

Have you changed the permissions on the individual files as well as just the directory?

chmod -R 777 /home/user/xxx

Answer 2

Apache's errorlog will explain why you get a permission denied. Also, serverfault.com is a better forum for a question like this.

If the error log simply says "permission denied", su to the user that the webserver is running as and try to read from the file in question. So for example:

sudo -s
su - nobody
cd /
cd /home
cd user
cd xxx
cat index.html

See if one of those gives you the "permission denied" error.

Answer 3

Could be SELinux. Check the appropriate log file (/var/log/messages? - been a while since I've used a RedHat derivative) to see if that's blocking the access.

Answer 4

Can't you set the Loglevel in httpd.conf to debug? (I'm using FreeBSD)

ee usr/local/etc/apache22/httpd.conf

change loglevel :

'LogLevel: Control the number of messages logged to the error_log. Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, alert, emerg.'

Try changing to debug and re-checking the error log after that.

Answer 5

Turns out... we had to also chmod 755 the parent directory, user, in addition to xxx.

Answer 6

Not sure if you've fixed it but in your httpd.conf

Check to see your User/Group settings. Usually it will be set to

User www Group www

If so change it to your name/group

User Greg group staff

Answer 7

hello, im using CentOS 5.5 and for me it was SElinux messing with it, i forgot to check that out. you can temporary disable it by doing as root

echo 0 > /selinux/enforce

hope it help someone