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Apache Userdir with SELinux on Fedora 16/15, CentOS/RHEL 6.2/5.7

Updated by JR on Jan 12, 2012 in CentOS, Fedora, Linux, Red Hat (RHEL), Server Guides, Servers | 23 comments

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This is quick guide howto enable Apache userdirs with SELinux on Fedora 16/15/14/13/12, CentOS 6.2/6.1/6/5.7 and Red Hat (RHEL) 6.2/6.1/6/5.7. This guide assumes that you have Apache (httpd) server installed on your system. This guide uses separeted userdir.conf without touching httpd.conf so later default httpd.conf can be overrided or whole configuration moved simply. This guide uses user called testuser and should be replaced by real user name(s).

Enable Apache Userdirs

1. Change root user

su -
## OR ##
sudo -i

2. Create /etc/httpd/conf.d/userdir.conf file

Open file, with our favorite editor, like:

nano -w /etc/httpd/conf.d/userdir.conf

Add something like following content to file:

<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
    #
    # UserDir is disabled by default since it can confirm the presence
    # of a username on the system (depending on home directory
    # permissions).
    #
    UserDir enabled testuser
 
    #
    # To enable requests to /~user/ to serve the user's public_html
    # directory, remove the "UserDir disabled" line above, and uncomment
    # the following line instead:
    #
    UserDir public_html
 
</IfModule>
 
<Directory /home/*/public_html>
        Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks
 
        AllowOverride All
        Allow from all
 
        Order deny,allow
</Directory>

And save file.

Note:
To allow a few users to have UserDir directories, but not anyone else, use the following:

UserDir disabled
UserDir enabled testuser1 testuser2 testuser3

To allow most users to have UserDir directories, but deny this to a few, use the following:

UserDir enabled
UserDir disabled testuser4 testuser5 testuser6

3. Start/Restart Apache (httpd)

/etc/init.d/httpd start
## OR ##
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

4. Create public_html directory/directories

Make public_html directory/directories on user/users home dirs.

mkdir /home/testuser/public_html

5. Change the correct permissions to home and public_html directories

## home directory ##
chmod 711 /home/testuser
 
## public_html directory ##
chown testuser:testuser /home/testuser/public_html
chmod 755 /home/testuser/public_html

6. Set proper SELinux settings for Apache homedirs (httpd_enable_homedirs)

setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs true

Looks like older SELinux versions needs also following (example CentOS and Red Hat):

chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /home/testuser/public_html

Test Enabled Apache Userdir

Go to url http://localhost/~testuser/

Should look something like following:

Test HTML and PHP under Apache Userdir

Create following files ~/public_html/test.html and ~/public_html/test.php
~/public_html/test.html content

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Testing Apache Userdir</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Testing Apache Userdir!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

~/public_html/test.php content

<?php
  phpinfo();
?>

Reload browser:

Check test files:

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23 Comments

krcg / October 29, 2010

Nice one, there are actually some good facts on this post many of my subscribers just might find this useful, I will send them a link, thank you

Reply
Jozsef / November 5, 2010

Works! Nice :)

I found out that if I set UseCanonicalName On in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf – apache is changing localhost in the browser to the ServerName specified in httpd.conf and the pages in ~/public_html are not loading at all. So I set UseCanonicalName Off again :)

Best,
Jozsef

Reply
Jozsef / November 5, 2010

Or else,
It could be fixed in /etc/hosts by adding:
127.0.0.1 nameOFtheSERVER

:)

Best,
Jozsef

Reply
Fhon / November 27, 2010

I follow your step html is working but php just show me blank screen.

Is there any light on how and why?

Best!
Fhon

Reply
- JR / November 30, 2010
  
  Hi Fhon,
  
  Is your PHP working on any other dir?
  Is it working example on /var/www/html dir?
  
  Reply

Fhon / November 30, 2010

Hi JR,

Php is working on /var/www/html

but not /home/user/public_html

When try to access test.php file it just show download the file.
Run test.html work show the page without problem.

Best!
Fhon

JR / December 1, 2010

Hi again Fhon,

A few additional questions.

What operating system (and version) are you using?

Did you execute following command?

chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /home/testuser/public_html

Post following commands output:

sed '/^ *#/d;s/#.*//' /etc/httpd/conf.d/{php,userdir}.conf
 
## AND ##
 
ls -laZ ~/public_html/

Adods / January 14, 2012

Hello,

I have the same problem as Fhon

and here is my output for those commands:

 
  LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
 
 
  LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5-zts.so
 
 
AddHandler php5-script .php
AddType text/html .php
 
DirectoryIndex index.php
 
sed: can't read /etc/httpd/conf.d/userdir.conf: No such file or directory

userdir.conf didn’t exists because I enable the mod directly from httpd.conf, and here is the configuration for userdir:

 
    AllowOverride All
    Options MultiViews Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all

and here is output from ls command:

drwxr-xr-x. server webdev unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0 .
drwx--x--x. server server unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_dir_t:s0 ..
-rwxr-xr-x. server server unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0 test.php
-rwxr-xr-x. server server unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0 test.php~
-rw-rw-r--. server server unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0 text.html
-rw-rw-r--. server server unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0 text.html~

Is there something wrong with my configuration?

JR / January 14, 2012

Hi Adods,

Is PHP working normally on /var/www/html directory?

Is HTML files working normally from user directory?

Could you post your full httpd.conf file and full path of your Apache userdir what you are using?

Reply

Fred / December 4, 2010

Great Tutorials, thanks you.

On Fedora 14 I had to :

setsebool -P httpd_read_user_content 1

Reply
Doufanat / October 3, 2011

Hi JR,

I’m running Fedora 14
I followed this tutorial to first install mysql, and then to install Apache (httpd) with php, the PHP test page creation succeed but not the last test remote connection.
And also while enabling Apache Userdir i couldn’t succeed and got this error in the browser: “Not Found
The requested URL /~testuser/ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.17 (Fedora) Server at localhost Port 80″

Please help i’m a new user.
Thanks!

Reply
- JR / October 3, 2011
  
  Hi Doufanat,
  
  What problems you have with remote connections? Do you opened iptables firewall port? Or are you behind some other firewall?
  
  Do you actually have testuser with home dir on your Linux? Could you check your apache error_logs and post last errors here when you try to access testuser dir?
  
  Reply
Doufanat / October 3, 2011

Hi,

I have some access problem

[root@Xia Xia]# chown testuser:testuser /home/testuser/public_html
chown: invalid user: `testuser:testuser’
[root@Xia Xia]# chmod 755 /home/tesuser/public_html
chmod: cannot access `/home/tesuser/public_html’: No such file or directory
[root@Xia Xia]#

Need help please

Reply
- JR / October 3, 2011
  
  Hi,
  
  So it looks like, that you don’t have testuser. I used this testuser just an example here…so if your username is example doufanat then you should use doufanat instead of testuser.
  
  Reply
  - Doufanat / October 3, 2011
    
    Hi JR
    
    Thanks a lot, I’ve finished enabling Apache userdirs and it succeed, but the problem with the test remote connection till remain.
    
    How to check my Apache error_logs? how to check either the port is open or not.
    
    Best
    
    Reply
    - JR / October 3, 2011
      
      Hi Doufanat,
      
      Actually you don’t need Apache error_logs anymore if yoy get userdirs working… :)
      
      First check, you could run following command:
      
      iptables -L
      
      Then next thing is ensure that you have own and public ip address?
      
      Reply
Doufanat / October 3, 2011

Hi JR

This is result of iptables -L

[root@Xia Xia]# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
ACCEPT all — anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
ACCEPT icmp — anywhere anywhere
ACCEPT all — anywhere anywhere
ACCEPT tcp — anywhere anywhere state NEW tcp dpt:ssh
ACCEPT tcp — anywhere anywhere state NEW tcp dpt:http
REJECT all — anywhere anywhere reject-with icmp-host-prohibited

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
REJECT all — anywhere anywhere reject-with icmp-host-prohibited

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
[root@Xia Xia]#

Do I need

Reply
- JR / October 4, 2011
  
  You iptables rules looks good, but then next thing is have public ip, if you want open your server to whole world or lan ip, if you want open your server locally?
  
  Reply
alphadogg / October 15, 2011

FYI, in my case, I had to modify the UserDir settings I found in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Following your instructions and creating a userdir.conf file was overriden by the defaults in httpd.conf.

Reply
Nicholas / January 11, 2012

Thank you for your tutorial, I couldn’ find much out explaining how to do this. Right now I am having this problem after running the command

setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs true

I get

“-bash: setsebool: command not found”

I am running Centos 6.0, what could be causing the issue?

Thanks

Reply
- JR / January 11, 2012
  
  Hi Nicholas,
  
  Could you post output of following commands:
  
  rpm -qa *selinux* *policy* |sort ls -la /usr/sbin/setsebool whereis setsebool
  
  CentOS 6.0 should not be a problem…
  
  Reply
Alice / January 23, 2012

I keep getting a 403 Forbidden saying I don’t have permission to access this…can you help me?

Reply
- JR / January 24, 2012
  
  Hi Alice,
  
  What system you are running?
  
  Could you post output of following commands:
  
  ls -la /home ls -la ~/ |grep public_html ls -laZ ~/public_html/
  
  Reply

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Apache Userdir with SELinux on Fedora 16/15, CentOS/RHEL 6.2/5.7

Enable Apache Userdirs

1. Change root user

2. Create /etc/httpd/conf.d/userdir.conf file

3. Start/Restart Apache (httpd)

4. Create public_html directory/directories

5. Change the correct permissions to home and public_html directories

6. Set proper SELinux settings for Apache homedirs (httpd_enable_homedirs)

Test Enabled Apache Userdir

Test HTML and PHP under Apache Userdir

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23 Comments

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