How to allow acces to a symbolic link in my ~/Sites/ for Apache under Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2

macos mac apache-http-server symbolic-link

31,289

Solution 1

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

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

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>

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
```

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>

Edit the /etc/hosts file and add this at the top:
```
127.0.0.1 MyWebSite.local
```
Make a Symlink to link your Code directory to one in the Sites directory.
```
ln -s ~/Code/MyWebSite ~/Sites/MyWebSite
```
Restart apache

Solution 2

In fact only the first 2 steps from Emjay's answer plus an apache restart are necessary, here is what worked for me:

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

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>

check your apache config

sudo apachectl -t
restart apache

sudo apachectl restart

Now Apache will serve the symbolic links under your Sites directory.

Solution 3

I was getting 403 forbidden error. What solved my problem is in httpd-vhosts.conf, I replaced the below config

<Location "/modulename">
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Location>

with

<Location "/modulename">
  Require all granted
</Location>

Did the same for all the Location tags. It solved the permission issue.

31,289

robertj

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

robertj over 1 year
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
robertj over 12 years

Hi, sorry - This answer doesnt help at all.
Lazy Badger over 12 years

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 over 12 years

and check permissions for files inside ~, presence of DirectoryIndex file after it: solve task sequentially, checking all possibilities
robertj over 12 years

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.
juuga over 12 years

@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
slhck over 12 years

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.
Shanimal almost 12 years

I went from xampp zend environment to the default mac/apache setup and after a restart was dead in the water. Step 2 was key. Thank you!