Magic Apache redirecting for /~username

Question

Hi,

I have inherited a webserver already serving some websites. I am trying to migrate some of those sites to a new webserver.

One of those websites has a page called: http://mydomain/ABCDepartment/

This URL also works: http://mydomain/~joesmith

and the index page for joesmith actually lives in /var/www.../ABCDepartment/people/joesmith/

Now I am checking in httpd.conf and I see the following:

UseCanonicalName Off
UserDir public_html
UserDir disabled root

There are no special mod_rewrite rules for joesmith or the ~

How is this magic happening? UseCanonicalName is off, and if it wasn't UserDir public_html should look in /home/joesmith/public_html

What am I missing?

Answer 1

This is an Apache extension called userdir: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_userdir.html

It automatically rewrites requests to point to a folder called public_html within the user's home directory (the web server must have read access up the tree to this folder).