23 comment

1. Hello, I followed your tutorial in chrooting Apache and creating Virtual domains. However I have a problem. When I try accessing my website via the URL: http://mydomain.com/

   I’m getting an error as indicated below:

   “You don’t have permission to access / on this server.
   Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.”

   What could I have not done correctly? This seems to be a common problem with new Linux installations such as mine but I have failed to find a solution that matches my case.

   1. See this page : Apache 403 Forbidden Error and Solution

2. Thanks for the page. I had not seen it. Btw 1 question on the virtualhost config files shown above. Why doesn’t the path to the DocumentRoot not begin from the jail directory. I.e Why do we use “/home/httpd/.nixcraft.com/http” in the config file and not “httpdjail/home/httpd/.nixcraft.com/http” ?
   Thanks.

   1. / or /httpdjail is not accessible from the jail. Your /httpdjail becomes a new / directory and protects real / file system. So you need to use home/httpd/.nixcraft.com/http as path.

3. Hi,

   I see. Then I can now understand why do not include httpdjail. Thanks alot.

   I have tried to follow the above instructions to the letter but I get the following on console when I restart httpd:

   Starting httpd: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/httpd/.nixcraft.com/http] does not exist

   Then viewing the error log, I also found this:
   No such file or directory: httpd: could not open error log file /home/httpd/nixcraft.com/logs/error_log. Unable to open logs

   So it occurs to me that Apache attempts to read the DocumentRoot before it gets chrooted into the jail or something like that? Could these two pieces of information be pointing at some configuration problem?

4. Hello,

   I finally got Apache to start up and everything works but I had to do change the logs directory and do a symlink to it. I think this is not yet a good solution enough but at least Apache starts and works fine. I am still combing this issue and I hope I shall share my solution once I am convinced I have one good enough.

5. Hello,

   I had the same issues. After changing the log directories to the real path (/httpdjail/home/httpd/.theos.in/logs/*_log) it starts up buth with the warning that the directory /home/httpd/.theos.in does not exist. After that it works like a charm. Do we just have to ignore this warning, or is something not working as it should? I am using CentOS 5.2.

6. Hello,
   thank you for this howto.
   A few things to say:
   Please alter the Path in:
   Virtual hosting configuration for nixcraft.com
   Create /etc/httpd/conf/vdomains/nixcraft.com.conf file as follows:
   should be /etc/httpd/vdomains/nixcraft.com.conf
   ———-
   so far I got it qithout errors /chroot is built and mod_chroot says it is happy chrooting.
   BUT the virtual domains path with /home… will not be reckoned by httpd.
   SELinux is off but auditd is on.

   Though I assume I’am not chrooted! Test with chroot without vdomains result in /var/www/html calls but not in {chroot}/var/www/html.

   Thank you for your help.

7. @willi,

   Thanks for the heads up. I’ve update tutorial. Let me know if you need any other help.

8. well yes my main problem is:

   from last posting:
   so far I got it qithout errors /chroot is built and mod_chroot says it is happy chrooting.
   BUT the virtual domains path with /home… will not be reckoned by httpd.

   thank youi

9. But this doesn’t prevent a php script from reading a file in another virtualhost just by browsing the path. Is any solution for that? I mean a chroot for every virtualhost

   1. You can chroot each jail or better use suexec which prevents reading other users files by UID.

10. apachectl -t

    Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/httpd/.nixcraft.com/http] does not exist
    Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/httpd/.theos.in/http] does not exist
    Syntax OK

    I did everything as written, do not know what the problem is

11. Hi, thanks for the tutorial.
    I’ve checked and overchecked everything. The settings are the same except from the chroot jail name. I have the same problem as others, it can’t seem to find the directories from the virtualhosts. If i use it without the virtualhost it starts normally and chroots the directory to /var/www/html (the chrooted not the real one). Where could be the problem?

    1. This configuration did not work for me either however, I was able to get Virtual Hosting working by using the using the VirtualDocumentRoot directive instead. It works successfully inside the httpdjail.

       Here’s how to do it. If you have applied the above instructions and it didn’t work then you should do the following:

       Edit the Apache conf file:
       vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

       First, comment out the NameVirtualHost:
       #NameVirtualHost *:80

       And comment out the vdomain directory lookup:
       #include vdomains/*.conf

       Then add (or uncomment) the following:
       VirtualDocumentRoot /home/www/%0/
       VirtualScriptAlias /home/www/%0/cgi-bin/

       Then Save and Exit.

       Now make the directories for all/any virtual hosts that you want:
       mkdir /httpdjail/home/www/www.example.com

       And give it the proper permissions
       chmod +x /httpdjail/home/www/www.example.com

       Then restart Apache:
       /etc/init.d/httpd restart

       If it comes up OK, then it should work. Test it out by placing an index.html in that new VirtualDocumentRoot directory that you just created and see if you can pull it up in a web browser. Keep in mind that you need to have the DNS entry already resolving to the box (OR you can modify your HOSTS file on your local system to manually direct to the webserver you are working on. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file).

       If everything works then you can delete the /etc/httpd/vdomain directory, and the /etc/httpd.skel directory, and also the /home/httpd/.nixcraft.com and also remove the new users you created from /etc/passwd and back out all the changes from this page.

       Hope this helps.

       1. hi it works:)

          Tell me sth:
          1. how can users access to chroot e.g to sent their own index.html (users dont exist in os)
          2. only access to chroot, got a root

          I Think, I don’t undrestand sth in that chroot…
          regards,
          drake

12. tryed several manuals for chroot, but i always get next error :

    Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected ‘Europe/Berlin’ for ‘CEST/2.0/DST’ instead in /var/www/html/index.php on line 6 Fatal error: date(): Timezone database is corrupt – this should *never* happen! in /var/www/html/index.php on line 6

    it’s on fedora 13.

    again – always if i try to integrate mod_chroot, i get that error.

    if i “turn off” mod_chroot, i do have no problem.

    what could be the cause?

    1. You need to make a copy the zoneinfo files into your jail so php can read them and understand the definition of all the timezones and internationalization settings.

       if your jail is in /httpdjail, just do this:

       cp -fR /usr/share/zoneinfo/* /httpdjail/usr/share/zoneinfo/

       1. Thank you!
          Took some time for me to find this comment. I knew that I had to copy something to jail but didn’t know what. 🙂

13. Is there a PHP script available to add/edit/remove apache virtual host through the browser ?

14. hi guys .. this looks like an ok solution but does anyone know how to do this with the mod_chroot now included with apache2 since .10 release? it seems to me that the mod_chroot allows all of one directory to be in a jail but does not prevent virtual hosts from intruding into each other.

15. I have the same problem as Milan and Arpad. Followed the previous instructions and these, but apachectl -t or restarting apache tells me that the /home/httpd/.mydomain.com/http does not exist. I also get errors in the global apache error log that the vhost logs file does not exist. Using Centos 5.7 with apache 2.2.3 and have turned selinux off temporarily. Hope someone has some advice.

16. you can use mpm_itk. This isolates different virtual hosts from each other.

    Have a question? Post it on our forum!