So, there I was, setting up the website, and I decided to add some icons to it to break up the text.
I tried setting up a symlink to make /icons on the webserver point to
/usr/share/icons on my system, but that didn't work for some reason.
I didn't want to waste too much time figuring out exactly what the problem was, so I tried adding an
"Alias" directive for /icons to the Apache config,
and that worked, so I moved on and decided to come back to the problem later.
The other night, I went back to it. I removed the "Alias" directive, leaving only the symlink in place, and tried to figure out what was happening. I kept getting HTTP 404 "Not Found" errors for the icons, and an HTTP 403 "Forbidden" error for the directory itself. Clearly, something was not right.
I checked that the symlink was correct - yes.
I checked that the user that the webserver ran under had permissions to read the /usr/share/icons directory on the
underlying filesystem - yes.
I added a "Directory" directive for /usr/share/icons
and ensured that the "Options" were set to follow
symlinks, and to allow indexes (directory listings) - yes.
Still not working.
So I checked everything again. Then I had a browse round StackExchange and its member sites for issues with symlinks or directory listings not working. Still nothing.
Eventually, I did what I probably should have done some time before, and checked the error log.
There I found the significant clue: Cannot serve directory /usr/share/apache2/icons/.
It turns out that the default configuration of
mod_autoindex, which is enabled by default in Apache
installations on Debian, takes over the /icons URL to serve up the filetype icons in
directory listings, from /usr/share/apache2/icons.
Further, that directory is set to not serve directory listings, so no matter what options I put on the
/usr/share/icons directory, it wasn't going to make any difference to the options for the directory that was actually
being served up.
By moving my symlink from /icons to /img/icons, and updating all the links appropriately, suddenly everything worked
again.
So, lesson learned - check the error log sooner next time.
But... it seems odd to me that a built-in Apache module would take over such an obvious and useful part of the root
namespace on all websites for itself.
Do the authors really think that no-one would want to use /icons on their own site?
It's not just mod_autoindex, either.
mod_info uses /server-info, mod_ldap uses /ldap-status, and mod_status uses /server-status.
Granted, these locations aren't quite as valuable as /icons, and not all of those modules are enabled by default.
Still, I'd have thought that Apache would reserve something more obscure, like /x-apache/, or even /x-\*) and
require all modules to use a subset of this namespace instead.
Maybe I should submit a patch...
posted at: 16:28 | path: / | permanent link to this entry