Odd User Error from Apache2

[demsley]

OK We have a very odd error on an Ubuntu Server for students developing websites and programming using PHP/MySQL and vsftpd to upload.

A student can upload his work.

Going to the correct URL: http://10.10.1.50/~username

Returns the error: You don't have permission to access /~username on this server.

Searching the net gave a number of options including using chmod 777 which is silly but in desparation I tried it to no avail.

The class has 22 students all of whom were created at the same time, all of whom work except this one user. No odd characters in file names, user name etc, member of all same groups and so on.

I'm a little frustrated and confused to say the least.

I did check the error log:
[Thu Nov 08 15:26:03 2012] [error] [client 10.10.1.10] client denied by server configuration: /home/username/public_html/
[Thu Nov 08 15:37:02 2012] [error] [client 10.10.1.10] client denied by server configuration: /home/username/public_html




Any Ideas?

Thanks in Advance.

Dave

[glennda]

Whats in your config file for the site? Under /etc/apache2/sites-available/default (or any other name you have given this file)

[Geoff]

Indeed, post your relevant apache configuration sections.

[twin--turbo]

is the user folder chmod,chgrp,chown (ed) the same as the other user folders.

Rob

[demsley]

is the user folder chmod,chgrp,chown (ed) the same as the other user folders.

Rob

Yes, the groups etc are correct - well same as the others that all work anyway ;-)
Will check the config files on monday and post.

Thanks
Dave

[Steve21]

One thing that might be worth checking, as I fell into this when mucking around before, is do you have any additional security modules loaded? Some of them (e.g. Anti-DOS modules) will go a bit nuts and block access if a website is trying to pull too much at once.

Might be worth trying just to put a bog standard test page up to try to see if you can access that, rather than an all signing/dancing page. Just in case whatever is on there work is tripping something.

Might be nothing, but worth a shot for what takes a few seconds

Steve

[ZeroHour]

I *think* apache defaults disable user dirs from working properly until you turn them on, having a good now for the note I spotted.

[demsley]

Hi Guys, I was off earlier this week. Here's /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. I'm unsure as to how this might be affecting this individual user as all the other users (24 of them) all work. I'm a newbie with Apache so I'd appreciate an explanation as well as a solution if you can spare the time for that.

Any advice greatfully accepted.

Cheers

Dave

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
<Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

[Geoff]

That configuration section is not relevant to mod_userdir configuration. Please post the correct section.

[ZeroHour]

Yeh I think your missing mod_userdir possibly.

Enable apache mod_userdir on Debian - jah's blog Blog
mod_userdir - Apache HTTP Server

[demsley]

Hope this is the right mod you need to see.

I've looked in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled and the userdir.conf looks OK to me, from what I can find. Both have 777 permissions which looks odd to me. Also they are gree rather than cyan in the listing which I think means they are the files themselves as opposed to symbolic links?

userdir.conf contains this....
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
UserDir public_html
UserDir disabled root

<Directory /home/*/public_html>
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>
</IfModule>

and userdir.load contains....
LoadModule userdir_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_userdir.so

The file listed in there does exist and has 644 permissions.

Again very confused why it would work for 23 students but not this one.

Cheers
Dave

[Geoff]

The users public_html folder is missing or unreadable by the webserver.

[demsley]

Thanks for this but I'm not sure why. The folder ,and all files within, have 755 permissions.

[CyberNerd]

SELinux on ?

tail your /var/log/messages

[Geoff]

If you think it is SELinux you can temporally put it into permissive mode to check.