Symbolic link not allowed or target not accessible

[aqdennis]

Hi,

Until now I had a webshop running on shared hosting, but we decided to run it on a VPS with DirectAdmin running on CentOS.
As the webshop is currently still running, I first want to build the new webshop before letting the domain name point at it. Hence, I would have to refer to the new webshop with just the IP address for now, but the problem is that somehow doesn't work.

In httpd.conf the DocumentRoot is specified as /var/www/html. This is also the directory I see when I just type the IP address in my browser.
The new webshop (domain = engrano.nl) will run in /home/admin/domains/engrano.nl/public_html
There is a symbolic link linking /home/admin/public_html to /home/admin/domains/engrano.nl/public_html

Hence, what I did is making a symbolic link from /var/www/html/public to the new webshop's public_html directory. But when I try to access the webshop in my browse through "<IP address>/public" I get a 403 error and the Apache log says:

Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /home/admin/public_html
File does not exist: /var/www/html/403.shtml

What I've made sure of and tried, but unsuccessfully, is:

- both symbolic link as directory is linked to have full read/write/exec rights
- making owner/group the same for both ends of the symbolic link
- add in httpd.conf for /var/www/html the options "+FollowSymLinks" and remove "-SymLinksIfOwnerMathc"
- try to replace the symbolic link with an Alias

The strange thing is, that there are more symbolic links in /var/www/html for for instance phpMyAdmin, and those work. But, they link to other directories within /var/www and not to /home/admin/domains....
So it seems that the symbolic link is found and executed, but the problem is in the directory it's pointing too. However, I do not see what the problem there might be.

Anyone a clue what I can try ??

Thanks in advance,
Dennis

 

[nobaloney]

You can change your Apache coinfiguraiton to allow symbolic links (very insecure) or allow symbolic links if owner matches (somewhat more secure). Neither are a good idea. And as yoou can see, neither will work because PHP considers it insecure. You can make it less secure, but don't.

Better to either use a separate dedicated IP#, in which case you can reach your new site by IP# while working on it.

Or to make changes in your local machine's hosts file to be able to point to it with the actual domain name. You may want a separate IP# later anyway, so you can use a Secure Site Certificate.

Or you can just create a new temporary domain name to use for working on the new server.

Jeff