Chapter 14. Apache HTTP Server

195

14.5.27.

Allow

Allow

specifies which requester can access a given directory. The requester can be

all

, a domain

name, an IP address, a partial IP address, a network/netmask pair, and so on. Your

DocumentRoot

directory is configured to

Allow

requests from

all

meaning everyone has access.

14.5.28.

Deny

Deny

works just like

Allow

, but you are specifying who is denied access. Your

DocumentRoot

is not

configured to

Deny

requests from anyone by default.

14.5.29.

UserDir

UserDir

is the name of the subdirectory within each user's home directory where they should place

personal HTML files which are to be served by the Web server.

By default, the subdirectory is

public_html

. For example, the server might receive the following

request:

http://your_domain/~username/foo.html

The server would look for the file:

/home/username/public_html/foo.html

In the above example,

/home/username/

is the user's home directory (note that the default path to

users' home directories may be different on your system).

Make sure that the permissions on the users' home directories are set correctly. Users' home direc 

tories must be set to 0711. The read (r) and execute (x) bits must be set on the users'

public_html

directories (0755 will also work). Files that will be served in users'

public_html

directories must

be set to at least 0644.

This directive is set to

disable

by default.

14.5.30.

DirectoryIndex

The

DirectoryIndex

is the default page served by the server when a user requests an index of a

directory by specifying a forward slash (/) at the end of the directory name.

When a user requests the page http://your_domain/this_directory/, they will get either the

DirectoryIndex

page if it exists, or a server generated directory list. The default for

Directo 

ryIndex

is

index.html index.htm index.shtml index.php index.php4 index.php3 in 

dex.cgi

. The server will try to find any one of these files, and will return the first one it finds. If

it does not find any of these files and

Options Indexes

is set for that directory, the server will

generate and return a listing, in HTML format, of the subdirectories and files in the directory.

14.5.31.

AccessFileName

AccessFileName

names the file which the server should use for access control information in each

directory. By default, your Web server is set to use

.htaccess

, if it exists, for access control infor 

mation in each directory.

Immediately after the

AccessFileName

directive, a set of

Files

tags apply access control to any

file beginning with a

.ht

. These directives deny Web access to any

.htaccess

files (or other files

which begin with

.ht

) for security reasons.