hello All,
i am currently using RHEL 4 and I wont consider myself as a newbie but i do need some help (as all of us do, in some way shape or form). Now I am just learning to configure the Apache Web server but i am not experienced enough with this. I do know that pages are displayed on /var/www/html but i created a webdocs folder in my /home/"syed". i would like to know if there are any scripts so that whatever i do in my home folder, that would be copied over to my /var/www/html folder. For example, if i could just have my webdocs be automatically syncronized with my /var/www/html. Also if i create a new user, is there any way that i could just have the directory copied to both places. Thanks.
Syed Zaidi

i do something similar, and i think my way is a heck of a lot less trouble.

1) enable userdir support, serving pages from /home/[name]/public_html.

2) in /var/www/html, i just place a symlink of

/var/www/html/syed --> /home/syed/public_html

it ill help to have /home/[directories]/.. readable by apache.

after this, anything you place your your homedirs public_html folder, will be viewable at www.domain.com/syed. now, normally, this exact same concept is accomplished just thru the turning on of the homedir support, without all the symlinks, and just going to www.domain.com/~syed, but i have a few sites that i host, where i just created an account of the domain name, which is held under /home. instead of putting the sites files in /var/www/html, and mucking about with the permissions to allow the user to write via ftp there, i just symlink it back and make a virtual host in my httpd.conf. the virtual host settings say /var/www/html/domainfolder, but its actually a symlink back to /home/domain/public_html. this setup, also make the url of syed.domain.com quite easy to configure as well.

works quite well for me.

Thank you for this help, but I do not know how to create symlinks, However I am in favor in learning. Can you show me how to do this or give a link where the tutorial is quite easy to follow. Surry for buggin you.
Thanks

sure!

ln -s [sourcefolder] [targetlinkname]

the link can be anyname you like.ill actually use mine as an example. here is my web directory:

as you can see, i have 2 sites listed, that point back to homedirs, with symlinks. to create them, the least confusing way, would be to cd to /var/www/html, and specify the folder you want linked and the link name right there. the command i gave, would have been like this:

a very simple, but very useful tool. i *wish* windows servers could do that.

and this would continuasly syncronize both folders

also you said that i need to enable userdir support, how would i do that? surry for buggin u.

it would not syncronize... it would be the exact folder being served by apache.

to enable userdirs, check /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. it might also be called homedirs, i cant recall off the top of my head, but its one or the other.

ok..so if i understand correctly

1) user dirs- will handle all permission so that I can display my pages in /var/www/html

2) a symlink to my home folder from /var/www/html will create a link to my home folder and display it all.

Am i correct?

thanks

right, but you want to be sure you symlink your /home/syed/public_html and not /home/syed, or you will serve your homedir, and not the webpages you want.

study my above example again, and see how the --> after a name under /var/www/html points to a folder listed under a /home/syed. i wish the colors were like they were in bash. in my example, the symlinks in real life will show up as cyan, and make it easy to tell which ones are links, and which are real folders and files.

THANK YOU....IT all works welll

Thanks, It help me too!!!