How to make a directory apache readable on ubuntu

Question

Following problem: I have an ubuntu 12.04 server I made a virtual host with ``` DocumentRoot /var/www/ ``` Everything is fine, I see the correct index.html when I point with webrowser to the website of this virtual host. When I look to the owner of the www folder I see: ``` ls -l drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 10 09:07 www ``` Now I change the DocumentRoot to ``` DocumentRoot /root/testFolder/ ``` I copy my index.html in this folder, point with webrowser to my domain, then I get the message "You don't have the permission..." Ok, I check the owner of testFolder ``` ls -l drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 11 08:18 testFolder ``` It is the same as www folder. Ok my next try to change the group owner of testFolder ``` chown -R www-data:www-data /root/testFolder/ ``` But I get the same result in my browser: "You don't have permission to access / on this server."

Accepted Answer

Try:

```
chown -R apache:apache /root/testFolder/
```

and

```
chmod +r /root/testFolder
```

UPDATE The solution in this specific case was to move apache from under /root into a folder that doesn't require root privileges.

How to make a directory apache readable on ubuntu

Solution

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