Can't set UserDir to ~/Home/public_html in Multipass on MacOS host

Kristijan Zic

1/16/24, 10:51 PM

I'm on MacOS host, running a Multipass instance which I'm using as a LAMP server. Multipass maps ~/Home directory to the MacOS user directory and inside that directory I wanna have the public_html directory so I can develop from MacOS and the changes can be reflected in the Ubuntu LAMP.

Well, I've successfully enabled UserDir by running sudo a2enmod userdir, commenting out:

<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
    <Directory /home/*/public_html>
        php_admin_flag engine Off
    </Directory>
</IfModule>

from /etc/apatche2/mods-enabled/php8.1.conf

and replacing:

export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data

with

export APACHE_RUN_USER=ubuntu
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=ubuntu

in /etc/apache2/envvars

With all of this, I now have a ~/public_html in which I can put html and php files and it works fine but if I edit /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/userdir.conf from /home/*/public_html to /home/*/Home/public_html it doesn't work! I'm getting the 403.

The permissions for the public_html and a file inside is as follows:

ubuntu@primary:~$ ls -la ~/Home/public_html/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu   96 Jan 16 18:19 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu 1792 Jan 16 17:52 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu   17 Jan 16 18:19 test.php

What am I doing wrong? What's the way to achieve the desired result which I explained in the beginning?

110

1 + 5

server

permissions

apache2

multipass

matigo

1/16/24, 11:09 PM

When you say “it doesn’t work” do you mean that you’re receiving 500s? 404s? 403s? Fatal errors? Something else? Can I also confirm that on your MacOS host the full source directory is something like `/Users/kristijan/Home/public_html`?

Kristijan Zic

1/17/24, 12:31 AM

I'm getting the 403. I've updated the post with the permissions info for the whole path.

matigo

1/17/24, 12:37 AM

Is the Ubuntu instance using AppArmor? If so, then you’ll need to add a rule to allow this different directory. AppArmor will prevent applications from accessing directories they shouldn’t have access to, which could be the reason for the 403.

Kristijan Zic

1/17/24, 1:01 AM

I really have no idea why it doesn't work but I've realized that just symlinking whatever directory I want back into the ~/public_html like so: `ln -s ~/Home/public_html/ ~/public_html/public_html` works around the issue.

Kristijan Zic

1/17/24, 1:06 AM

But yes, apparmor seems to be loaded: `$ sudo aa-status` `apparmor module is loaded. \ 33 profiles are loaded. \ 33 profiles are in enforce mode.`

Score:0

Ubuntu

Kristijan Zic

1/17/24, 1:00 AM

Just symlinking whatever directory you want back into the ~/public_html like so: ln -s ~/Home/public_html/ ~/public_html/public_html fixes the issue.

+ 0

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Can't set UserDir to ~/Home/public_html in Multipass on MacOS host

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