Topic: symbolic links / file permission problems

[RyanKoehler]

Hi

I am running apache 2.2.13 on fedora 11 and can't figure out how to set permissions to allow following symbolic links and reading contents in the pointed-to directories (I would like cgi scripts to be locatable in linked directories too, but first things first)

TEST CASE
Here's my directory / file scenario:

/var/www/html <---< Top directory; "DocumentRoot" in httpd.conf (case1)
/var/www/html/test1 <---< Subdirectory directly below top (case2)
/var/www/html/test1/test.html <---< Test page in directory immediately "below" top (case3)
/var/www/html/test2 <---< Symbolic link (ln -s) to /var/www/html/test1 (case4)
/var/www/html/test2/test.html <---< Test page accessed via sym link, test2 (case5)
/home/ryan/play/web <---< "Remote" directory (case6)
/home/ryan/play/web/test.html <---< "Remote" test html page (case7)
/var/www/html/test2 <---< Symbolic link to remote dir; "command: ln -s /home/ryan/play/web test2" (case8 )

For each case, I put each url into firefox address bar, "clearing recent" between each test.

TEST RESULTS
Symbolic links clearly work (cases 4 and 5) but not if they point "outside" the top directory tree.

What happens is that I cannot access anything in the "Remote directory" so cases 7 and 8 yield a error:

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /test2/test.html on this server."

FILE SETTINGS
I've set (linux file) permissions on the remote files (cases 6, 7, 8 ) and links to everyone has "rwx"; I certainly can't leave things this way, but wanted to see if this might help? nope!

APACHE CONF SETTINGS
In the http.conf file I've set options "FollowSymLinks" in several places that seem to dictate link-following behavior (and stop / start apache each time) but no luck with the links. Here (in order) are directives that appear they might matter (comment and blanks stripped to save space):

DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory "/var/www/html">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /home/ryan/play/web>
AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
# Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
Options MultiViews Indexes FollowSymLinks IncludesNoExec
<Limit GET POST OPTIONS>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Limit>
<LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</LimitExcept>
</Directory>


PLEASE HELP!!!!
I'm running out of clues. And to make it worse, I think I ran into something like this years ago on a solaris machine and did indeed get it to work but now I can't recall how!

Thanks,
Ryan

[RyanKoehler]

I figured out my problem!

*Each* directory in my path "/home/ryan/play/web" needs to have world execute permission set.

That's it. I leave this post here in case it helps someone else (I tried this after reading a similar problem elsewhere).

-Ryan