Apache setup for multiple sites with common files

Question

Just realised i posted this on stack overflow by mistake, so here it is in the correct place!

I have approx 50 sites that all use the exact same files other than CSS and IMAGES, i currently duplicate the files each time i create a new site and upload different css and images.

What I want do so set up each vhost to have the same DocumentRoot then add AliasMatch for the css and images folders e.g:

#Common Files VHOST
<VirtualHost xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80>
    ServerName commonfiles.com
    ServerAlias www.commonfiles.com
    DocumentRoot /home/commonfiles/public_html
</VirtualHost>

#Sample vhost for 1 of the 50 sites.
<VirtualHost xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80>
    ServerName mytest.com
    ServerAlias www.mytest.com
    DocumentRoot /home/commonfiles/public_html
    ......
    AliasMatch /css/(.*) /home/ftpuser/public_html/mycss/$1
</VirtualHost>

The alias works perfectly for the bespoke files but the common files cant be accessed because of permission errors:

[Mon Nov 16 09:31:01 2009] [crit] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] (13)Permission denied: /home/commonfiles/public_html/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

This is the current server setup which I think may be part of the problem (Previous Server Admin Set this up):

Apache(Apache/2.2.14 (Unix)
PHP 5.2.11
CentOS 4.8 i686 standard
PHP 5 Handler is dso
Apache suEXEC is on

Any suggestions?

Show us the full, real config files; you've got a permissions problem but haven't showed us any of the permissions-related config. — womble, Nov 16 '09 at 11:25
I'm afraid, I'm not quite sure what to show, where can i obtain this info? — icelizard, Nov 16 '09 at 11:33
Example: /home/commonfiles/public_html/.htaccess has 644 commonfiles:commonfiles — icelizard, Nov 16 '09 at 11:34

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 16 '09 at 14:39

1

It appears that by default the the public_html folder has permissions of 750, I changed to 755 and updated the open_basedir restrictions and all started to work great.

I just have to make sure that I can still have a .htaccess per site.

answered Nov 16 '09 at 14:39

icelizard

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 16 '09 at 14:20

You've got an issue with a htaccess file somewhere.

If all your configuration is inside /etc/apache2 you don't even need htaccess file support enabled and can get a small speedup by disabling it.

You could also use something like mod_vhost_alias to simplify your configuration.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_vhost_alias.html

Apache setup for multiple sites with common files

2 Answers2