Apache 'You don't have permission to access / on this server'

Question

I just install apache2 on ubuntu,the default www directory is /var/www/ ,I use ln to link it to '/media/Software/Program Files/wamp/www/' at the windows directory,but the apache shows 'You don't have permission to access / on this server',Then I use 'sudo chmod -R 777 /media/Software/Program\ Files/wamp/www/' to set the permission,but it didn't work,and nothing changed when I saw the permission in the preporties of the '.../wamp/www' folder.So I want to know How can I change the www directory to '.../wamp/www' as I also need to access this diretory in windows.

Answer 1

There are two things around.

One is whether Apache is allowed to follow symlinks. Is you link a symlink via ln -s? It is the recommended way but it might be a security issue in some servers and it is disabled many times.

See http://superuser.com/questions/244245/how-do-i-get-apache-to-follow-symlinks for more info on that topic but esentially you need AllowOverride None as here:

<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

Other topic is the permissions.

Windows Partition

As it is a Windows directory (it seems so) the best option will be to follow this guide http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1604251:

Essentially it recommends you to edit the /etc/fstab The line should be like this one:

/dev/sdb5 /media/Software ntfs-3g defaults, ..., umask=227 0 0

The interesting part is the umask. I will recommend to put the last digit as 6 or 7 for allowing Apache to access.

The recommended way is to use UUID. The steps are:

0) Make a backup of fstab (just in case ;))

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

1) Get the UUID of your hard-drive:

sudo blkid

2) Add the line in fstab

It should be something like this:

UUID=$you_uuid  /media/Software  ntfs-3g  defaults,user,auto,utf8

I have added auto so that it auto mounts. If you don't want that use noauto instead.

This will give it full permission. If you prefer different permissions use dmask=000,fmask=111 as options. Instead of the it uses different numbers than chmod. If you want you can add also uid=100,gid=100 with the wanted another uid or gid.

References: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab http://askubuntu.com/questions/46588/how-to-automount-ntfs-partitions http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131

Linux/Unix Partition (if not using Windows partitions)

If it is not a Windows partition the permissions should be in the standard linux way.

The best option is to change the permission of that directory. I will do it in this way:

chgrp -R www-data /media/Software/Program Files/wamp/www/

Also you will need read permission (maybe write) for that directory. It is done in this way:

chmod g+r /media/Software/Program Files/wamp/www

For also adding write:

chmod g+rw /media/Software/Program Files/wamp/www

But again that won't work if the partition is a NTFS partition because Windows do not store permission in the disk in this way.

Answer 2

Assuming you have a default Apache install, you should update the DocumentRoot directive inside /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default and have this it point to /media/Software/Program\ Files/wamp/www/

DocumentRoot /media/Software/Program\ Files/wamp/www

Further infos can be found here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/urlmapping.html