Need some help setting up Apache user directories

Question

I would like to have Apache serve "normal" files out of /srv/http/public, and user files out of /srv/http/[user], so the directories might look like

/srv/http
  /public
    index.html - Accessible at localhost/index.html
  /austin
    index.html - Accessible at localhost/~austin/index.html

Right now, I have the following relevant configurations in the Apache .conf files

User http
Group http
DocumentRoot "/srv/http/public"

<Directory "/srv/http/public">
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

UserDir /srv/http
UserDir disabled root

<Directory "/srv/http">
  AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes
  Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
  <Limit GET POST OPTIONS>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Limit>
  <LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS>
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
  </LimitExcept>
</Directory>

And the following permissions in /srv/http:

drwxr-xr-x  root    http   /srv/http
drwxr-xr-x  http    http   /srv/http/public
-rwxr-xr-x  http    http   /srv/http/public/index.html
drwxr-xr-x  austin  http   /srv/http/austin
-rwxr-xr-x  austin  http   /srv/http/austin/index.html

Using this setup, localhost/index.html displays fine, but localhost/~austin/index.html gives a 403 Access forbidden! error, no matter what I try.

Edit: the relevant error_log entry: [error] [client ::1] client denied by server configuration: /srv/http/austin/index.html

What am I doing wrong?

Oh, and I don't think it really matters, but I'm using Arch Linux, and Apache 2.2.19

Answer 1

The problem was that the <Directory> directive for the user directories was too restrictive.

Re-using the same directives from the /srv/http/public directory allows the outside world to see any user files:

<Directory "/srv/http">
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>