Change the location of the public(www) Apache folder on debian 8

Question

I am facing a peculiar problem with apache2 running on debian 8. I followed a couple of tutorials to install it and everything worked great. The problem is that i have partitioned the disk as 9gb for the system files, 1gb swap and 30gb for the home folder so I wanted to move the www folder from it's current location (/var/www) to home(/home/www). I found more than a few guides on how to do that, some saying that i should change the lines in apache2.conf from this:

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

to this:

<Directory /home/paul/www/>
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride All
  Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Directory>

As well as the documentRoot

Others suggested using the 000-default.conf file located in the /etc/apache2/sites-available folder and change the default folder from /var/www to /home/paul/www.

I did both and the folder was seen but not accessible, so i used the quick solution and use chroot 777. After that apache redirected me back to /var/www. All settings point to /home/paul/www and the www folder has full read write permission. In fact neither the apache.conf nor 000-sites-available has any reference of /var/www so why does apache keep pointing me there? Is there something i missed?

p.s i did updates and upgrades multiple times as well as restarted the apache service and the entire pc.

jstuartmilne · Answer 1 · 2015-11-16T16:01:15.490

0

you need to change the ownership of files to allow apache there please try

chown -R www-data /home/paul/www/

however if you set a particion for your paul www why not mount the partition in /var/www

or you can create a symlink

ln -s /home/paul/www /var/www/paulsite

then edit your apache conf accordingly.

Regarding the edited file I recomend you use the 000-default better. in fact i would use that as a skeletone. and create a new file for your site then enable that site.

edited Nov 16 '15 at 16:01

answered Nov 16 '15 at 15:51

jstuartmilne

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I already did your first suggestion. The folder www and all it's contents have full read write permissions. I will try the symlink suggestion which looks very promising. – PaulB Nov 18 '15 at 10:35
could you post your /etc/fstab to check how you are mounting the partition? – jstuartmilne Nov 18 '15 at 10:50
nevermind. I got it with a different method. Thank you for your help though. – PaulB Nov 18 '15 at 18:15

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Ok so with a little research i realized that what i was trieing to do was not the best practice at all! (Thanx for the heads up Sudakatux). I found the solution in askubuntu for anyone interested.

Instead of trieing to change the mechanics of apache i enabled the userdir module and set up public_html in my home folder with 755 permissions. I use a redirection script from the initial location to the various locations on my home directory. Works just fine!

Change the location of the public(www) Apache folder on debian 8

2 Answers2