Serving apache files from alternate directories with symbolic links

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Serving apache files from alternate directories with symbolic links

Hello,

I'm trying to serve some files in my Documents directory from within my apache Sites directory by using symbolic links, and it isn't working.

Things I've done:

Linked to Documents directory:
ln -s /Users/username/Documents/test/ /Users/username/Sites/test

Made sure FollowSymLinks was turned on in /etc/apache2/users/username.conf:
<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Changed permissions on linked directory and its files:
chmod -R a+rx /Users/username/Documents/test
(I've also even tried to change the owner and group to www, still to no avail)

Restarted apache many times.

Every time I try to access http://localhost/~username/test/, I get a 403 -- and my apache log says this:
[error] [client ::1] Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /Users/username/Sites/test

Any ideas?

Regards,
Jeff

Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Oct 29, 2008 3:10 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Byron Formwalt

Level 1

19 points

Nov 4, 2008 8:42 PM in response to jeffinmotion

Jeff,

Your posted username.conf file is properly configured. I had this problem, as well. It comes down to a permissions problem with your Documents directory. If you do 'ls -al' in your home directory, you will probably notice either "drwxr--r--" or ""drwxr--r--+" for the permissions of your Documents directory. If you execute 'chmod a+rx Documents' from your home directory, you will probably solve this problem. It worked for me. Please, let me know if it works for you, as well.

Take care,
Byron

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Answer 2

jeffinmotion Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2008 8:41 AM in response to Byron Formwalt

Byron,

Thank you so much, this was exactly the solution to my issue. It wasn't enough that the linked directory had the correct permissions -- Indeed, the +entire path+ needed the correct permissions for Apache to navigate the link!

Best,
Jeff

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Answer 3

mhale62

Level 1

0 points

Jan 30, 2009 9:06 AM in response to jeffinmotion

Hi,

My question is possibly analogous to jeffinmotion's in that I'm wanting to use symbolic links to four firewire drives in such a way as to represent them as one big drive to an NMT (Popcorn Hour) in my case. Ideally, there's a way that I can put symlinks in a folder/directory and mount that as one folder.

Is that doable?

The problem is that the PH's firmware will only see one shared device at a time, i.e., my a/v content is spanning four 1 TB HDs and if I want to watch a vid on a volume other than that which is currently mounted, I have to back out to the Source menu and select and mount the desired drive; cumbersome, to be kind.

Regrettably I've so little experience w/Terminal and UNIX that I don't have the vocabulary to properly phrase my questions.

I'm more than willing to reiterate though 😉

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