CentOS - Jul 2009 - Apache not liking directories outside of /var/www

Hi all,

It appears that on my nice little CentOS 5.3 machines Apache only
allows me to store content in directories which are under /var/www/

For instance, putting content in /var/www/test and defining the following alias:

Alias /test /var/www/test

then accessing it under http://hostname/test works great.

Not copy that same content to /home/test, change the alias to:

Alias /test /home/test

and you get Error 403.

Any idea why that would be?

Never had this sort of trouble anywhere, including under CentOS 5.0 and 5.1

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Boris.

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:17, Boris Epstein<borepstein at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Any idea why that would be?
It's SELinux. Files exported by Apache must have context
httpd_sys_content_t. You can use "ls -Z" to see the context of a
certain file. You can use "chcon -R httpd_sys_content_t /home/test" to
change the context of all the files in the /home/test directory,
however that will not apply to new files created under that directory,
in which case you have to add new rules using "semanage fcontext" (see
the examples "man semanage" for help on how to do that).

In general I would advise you to try to adapt your application so that
the files that need to be seen by Apache are under /var/www, if you
have that flexibility it will be simpler and have less chance of
breaking in the future.

HTH,
Filipe

sounds like current default apache security
 
near the begining you of httpd.conf you will find 
 
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>

<Directory "/var/www/html">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

 
This effectively blocks you from sharing any directory (even aliased ones)
unless the actual directory (no symlinks or aliases) is under /var/www.
 
to add in exceptions put this under your alias statement.
 

Alias /test /home/test
<Directory /home/test>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
</Directory>
 
 

________________________________

From: centos-bounces at centos.org on behalf of Boris Epstein
Sent: Fri 7/31/2009 9:17 AM
To: centos at centos.org
Subject: [CentOS] Apache not liking directories outside of /var/www



Hi all,

It appears that on my nice little CentOS 5.3 machines Apache only
allows me to store content in directories which are under /var/www/

For instance, putting content in /var/www/test and defining the following alias:

Alias /test /var/www/test

then accessing it under http://hostname/test works great.

Not copy that same content to /home/test, change the alias to:

Alias /test /home/test

and you get Error 403.

Any idea why that would be?

Never had this sort of trouble anywhere, including under CentOS 5.0 and 5.1

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Boris.
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http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos


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