VirtualHost directive

[httpwebwitch]

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [e-mail]
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
DirectoryIndex index.php
DocumentRoot /home/me/sites/example.com/public_html

<Directory /home/me/sites/example.com/public_html>
AllowOverride all
Options all
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from none
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

If there's something wrong with this, I can't see what

it's included into the bottom of my httpd.conf

the symptom is: when I open example.com/index.php in a browser, I see

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /index.php on this server.

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at example.com Port 80

[lammert]

Does the user running the httpd server process (often called apache) have at least read access on the operating system level to your index.php and the directory tree to your document root?

[httpwebwitch]

I tried that. Changed the user, changed the permissions, even cracked the whole tree open with chmod -R 777, and no success.

in the error logs, I was getting:
(13)Permission denied: /home/me/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

I've finally discovered the problem... explained here [ulaptech.blogspot.com]
something called SELinux?

According to that advice, I can't be putting public_html folders anywhere except in the preconfigured /var/www/html folder. To do otherwise means turning off SELinux, and since I only just learned that word 5 minutes ago I don't think it's something I should be messing around with today.

At this point I had made so many little changes to the httpd.conf and other conf things... nano has no "undo" after you've saved things, so I just wiped out the server with a rebuild of the CentOS image, and I'm starting from scratch again.

that's really not a problem - I can yum all my stuff back in less than 10 minutes (I've done it 5 times already since Friday night)

This throws a big wrench into the file organization scheme I had in mind for this new server, but at least by the time I hit the sack tonight, I should have VirtualHosts working? We'll see...

[httpwebwitch]

it worked!

now I have two sites being served from the same CentOS server.

aha... that was the easy part. Now, to set a mail server... :)