[Discuss] apache problem

[blu at cyberpear.com (James Cassell)]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019, at 6:06 PM, dan moylan wrote:
> 
> derek martin writes:
> > On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 05:01:37PM -0500, dan moylan wrote:
> >> newly installed fc29 from scratch on my laptop -- apache
> >> appears to be running ok.  chrome displays
> >> localhost/welcome.htm just fine, but when i try
> >> localhost/moylan/welcome.htm, where welcome.htm is in
> >> /home/moylan/www, i get: "you don't have permission to
> >> access localhost/moylan/welcome.htm on this server"
> 
> ...
> 
> > Another possibility is that you seem to have an SELinux ACL defined on
> > the files (as indicated by the '.' character at the end of the
> > permissions in the directory listing), and your SELinux policy is in
> > some fashion forbidding access to the files by the web server.
> 
> well selinux was the issue.  i disabled it and the problem vanished.
> perhaps that's not a good idea, but i've run without it for years.
> 

Please don't disable SELinux.

With a stock Fedora 29 install, here's how to achieve what you're after, keeping SELinux and enabling mod_userdir only for your designated user:
# yum -y install httpd
# chmod +x ~moylan
* edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/userdir.conf
- add 'UserDir enabled moylan
- add 'UserDir www'
- change '<Directory "/home/*/public_html">' to '<Directory "/home/*/www">'
# systemctl restart httpd
# setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs on
# curl localhost/~moylan/welcome.html

If it's a legacy homedir, you may have to restore SELinux contexts:
# restorecon -Rv ~moylan


V/r,
James Cassell