how to configure apache to run pages with a different group id than files

Question

I have a vps with godaddy with the following:
centos 6
latest apache
whm/cpanel

I am running with suphp enabled.
files and folders are all 755,644

i have a program located at: /home/programname/public_html

this program edits files located on the same server in different user accounts. in order for this to happen i have to:
chown programname:programname /home/username/public_html
this allows the files to be edited by the program running at /home/programname/public_html

when i try to view the files at
/home/username/public_html
at its domain name
username.com
I get an "The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request."

in order to fix this i have to
chown username:username /home/username/public_html

how do i fix this so i can view the website files without having to chown the files?

Answer 1

You can use ACLs:

Enable ACLs on a filesystem: https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Storage_Administration_Guide/ch-acls.html

Set ACLs on a filesystem: https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Storage_Administration_Guide/acls-setting.html

There is also an apache module that I haven't had much luck with: apache2-mpm-itk - http://www.webtatic.com/packages/httpd-itk/

It has some issues because it doesn't support prefork properly.