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I need allow access to a sym-linked directory within ~/Sites from my Apache. I Symlinked the directories like this

ln -s ~/path/to/the/source/directory/ ~/Sites/source-link-here

Now whenever I fire up a GET request I get a 403 reply

curl http://localhost/~username/source-link-here/
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Forbidden</h1>
<p>You don't have permission to access /~username/source-link-here
on this server.</p>
...

How can I tell Apache to allow acces to the symlinked directory and how do I tell Apache to allow this only for requests fired from localhost.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best regards

robertj

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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Here is a blog post I wrote when I was trying to figure out how to do exactly what you are trying to do.

  1. Enable Web Sharing on the MAC by going to System Prefrences —> Sharing —> Check Enable Web Sharing

  2. Edit your username.conf file located in /private/etc/apache2/users and add the “FollowSymLinks” directive:

    <Directory "/Users/yourUserName/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

  3. Edit the /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf file and make sure the line under “# Virtual hosts” is not commented out, like so:

    Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

  4. Edit the /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf file and add:

    <VirtualHost *:80>  
    <Directory /Users/yourUserName/Sites/MyWebSite.com>
        Options +FollowSymlinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
  DocumentRoot /Users/yourUserName/Sites/MyWebSite
  ServerName MyWebSite.local
</VirtualHost>

  5. Edit the /etc/hosts file and add this at the top:

    127.0.0.1 MyWebSite.local

  6. Make a Symlink to link your Code directory to one in the Sites directory.

    ln -s ~/Code/MyWebSite ~/Sites/MyWebSite

  7. Restart apache

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Welcome to Super User! It would be nice to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link only for future reference. – slhck Nov 30 '11 at 12:06
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up vote 0 down vote

Options FollowSymLinks in httpd.conf for appropriate container

  1. Find DocumentRoot string in conf, remember it's value. Check content of <Directory "docroot here">...</Directory> section for Options string. If Options missing - add string Options FollowSymLinks, if exist but haven't FollowSymLinks - add this parameter in order to have smth like Options Indexes FollowSymLinks. Restart Apache after modifying config. Test result, write it here

  2. Read Apache docs

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Hi, sorry - This answer doesnt help at all. – robertj Nov 1 '11 at 12:03
Did you tried do it? you disabled FollowSymLinks in Apache config, you must to enable at site or directory level in order to use symlinked resources – Lazy Badger Nov 1 '11 at 12:09
and check permissions for files inside ~, presence of DirectoryIndex file after it: solve task sequentially, checking all possibilities – Lazy Badger Nov 1 '11 at 12:12
again - I am not able to make anything out of your comments. I am a total newbee concerning Apache (apart from my googling for the last 6 hours) I simply have no clue what the appropriate container is. What would be really helpful is a concrete example how to configure httpd.conf and httpd-vhost.conf. – robertj Nov 1 '11 at 12:22
@robertj - This is the solution to your problem. You need to edit that file and modify it accordingly like @Lazy_Badger said. It should be located under <Directory /usr/share/web>. Note that afterwards, you need to restart apache using sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart – Steven Lu Nov 1 '11 at 15:29
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