Apache: Isn't chmod 755 enough to set up symlink or alias on Apache httpd on Mac OS 10.5?

Question

On my Mac OS 10.5 machine, I would like to set up a subfolder of ~/Documents like ~/Documents/foo/html to be http://localhost/foo.

The first thing I thought of doing is using Alias as follows:

Alias /foo /Users/someone/Documents/foo/html

<Directory "/Users/someone/Documents/foo/html">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

This got me 403 Forbidden. In the error_log I got:

[error] [client ::1] (13)Permission denied: access to /foo denied

The subfolder in question has chmod 755 access. I've tried specifying likes like http://localhost/foo/test.php, but that didn't work either. Next, I tried the symlink route.

Went into /Library/WebServer/Documents and made a symlink to ~/Documents/foo/html. The document root has

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

This still got me 403 Forbidden:

Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /Library/WebServer/Documents/foo

What else do I need to set this up?

Solution:

$ chmod 755 ~/Documents

In general, the folder to be shared and all of its ancestor folder needs to be viewable by the www service user.

Answer 1

I'll bet that some directory above the one you want to access doesn't have permissions to allow Apache to traverse it. Become the user that Apache is running as (sudo -i -u apache or whatever), then try to change into the directory of interest and ls it. If you can't (as expected), then try getting into the directories above it, one by one, until one lets you in. The subdirectory of that is that one that needs to have o+x set. Lather, rinse, repeat as required.

Answer 2

Check your /Users directory (ls -l /Users) to see rights on your user (someone).
Also is the 'Sites' directory correctly available on localhost/~someone ?

Answer 3

Use +FollowSymlinks

Alias /foo /Users/someone/Documents/foo/html

<Directory "/Users/someone/Documents/foo/html">
    Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews

    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>