How can I change the document root of the Apache server? I basically want localhost
to come from /users/spencer/projects
directory instead of /var/www
.
I ended up figuring it out. Some suggested I change the httpd.conf
file, but I ended up finding a file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
and changed the root directory from /var/www
to /home/myusername/projects_folder
and that worked.
Please note, that this only applies for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and newer releases.
In my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the document root was set to /var/www/html
. It was configured in the following file:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
So just do a
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
and change the following line to what you want:
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
Also do a
sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
and find this
<Directory /var/www/html/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
and change /var/www/html
to your preferred directory
and save it.
After you saved your changes, just restart the apache2 webserver and you'll be done :)
sudo service apache2 restart
sudo nano
by a gksu gedit
.
Applies to Ubuntu 14.04 and later releases. Make sure to backup following files before making any changes.
1.Open /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
and search for <Directory /var/www/>
directive and replace path with /home/<USERNAME>/public_html
. You can use * instead of .
2.Open /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
and replace DocumentRoot
value property from /var/www/html
to /home/<USERNAME>/public_html
.
Also <Directory /var/www/html>
to <Directory /home/<USERNAME>/public_html
.
3.Open /etc/mods-available/php7.1.conf
. Find and comment following code
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
<Directory /home/*/public_html>
php_admin_flag engine Off
</Directory>
</IfModule>
Do not turn ON php_admin_flag engine OFF
flag as reason is mentioned in comment above Directive code. Also php version can be 5.0, 7.0 or anything which you have installed.
Create public_html
directory in home/<USERNAME>
.
Restart apache service by executing command sudo service apache2 restart
.
Test by running sample script on server.
If you couldn't find http.conf
and followed Nick's way.
Restart Apache using sudo service apache2 restart
.
In RedHat 7.0: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
The right way to change directory or run from multiple directories under different port for Apache 2 is as follows:
For Apache 2, the configuration files are located under /etc/apache2
and doesn’t use a single configuration file as in older versions but is split into smaller configuration files, with /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
being the main configuration file. To serve files from a different directory we need a new virtualhost conf file. The virtualhost configuration files are located in /etc/apache2/sites-available
(do not edit files within sites-enabled). The default Apache installation uses virtualhost conf file 000-default.conf
.
Start by creating a new virtualhost file by copying the default virtualhost file used by the default installation of Apache (the one that runs at localhost on port 80). Change into directory /etc/apache2/sites-available
and then make copy by sudo cp 000-default.conf example.com.conf
, now edit the file by sudo gedit example.com.conf
to:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin example@localhost
DocumentRoot /home/ubuntu/example.com
</VirtualHost>
I have deleted the nonimportant lines from the above file for brevity. Here DocumentRoot
is the path to the directory from which the website files are to be served such as index.html
.
Create the directory from which you want to serve the files, for example, mkdir example.com
and change owner and default group of the directory, for example, if your logged in user name is ubuntu
change permissions as sudo chown ubuntu:www-data example.com
. This grants full access to the user ubuntu
and allows read and execute access to the group www-data
.
Now edit the Apache configuration file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
by issuing command sudo gedit apache2.conf
and find the line <Directory /var/www/>
and below the closing tag </Directory>
, add the following below:
<Directory /home/ubuntu/example.com>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
Now there are two commands to enable or disable the virtualhost configuration files, which are a2ensite
and a2dissite
respectively. Now since our example.com.conf
file uses the same port(80
) as used by the default configuration file(000-default.conf
), we have to disable the default configuration file by issuing the command sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
and enable our virtualhost configuration file by sudo a2ensite example.com.conf
Now restart or reload the server with command sudo service apache2 restart
. Now Apache serves files from directory example.com
at localhost
on default port of 80
.
The a2ensite
command basically creates a symbolic link to the configuration file under the site-enabled directory.
Do not edit files within sites-enabled (or *-enabled) directory, as pointed out in this answer.
Now if you need to run the directory on a different port, change the port number from 80 to 8080 by editing the virtualhost file as:
<VirtualHost *:8080>
ServerAdmin user@localhost
DocumentRoot /home/ubuntu/work
</VirtualHost>
and editing /etc/apache2/ports.conf
and adding Listen 8080
just below the line Listen 80
Now we can enable the default virtualhost configuration file that runs on port 80 since example.com directory uses port 8080, as sudo a2ensite 000-default.conf
.
Now restart or reload the server with command sudo service apache2 restart
. Now both the directories can be accessed from localhost
and localhost:8080
.
This is for Ubunutu 14.04:
In file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
it should be as below without the directory name:
<Directory /home/username>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
And in file /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
you should include the custom directory name, i.e., www:
DocumentRoot /home/username/www
If it is not as above, it will give you an error when loading the server:
Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server
In case you are using Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), please update the 000-default.conf file in the directory /etc/apache2/sites-available.
Here ?
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/YourFolder
If someone has installed LAMP in the /opt
folder, then the /etc/apache2
folder is not what you are looking for.
Look for httpd.conf
file in folder /opt/lampp/etc
.
Change the line in this folder and save it from the terminal.
I had made the /var/www
to be a soft link to the required directory (for example, /users/username/projects
) and things were fine after that.
However, naturally, the original /var/www
needs to be deleted - or renamed.
For Apache 2 on Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon 64-bit, the following works:
In /etc/apache2/sites-available/
open the 000-default.conf
file, and change the Document Root to the absolute path of your directory.
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
In folder /etc/apache2/
open file httpd.conf
, and add a <Directory>
tag referencing your directory and containing the exact same settings as the tag for var/www
.
sudo vim /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
On my machine it looked like this:
<Directory /home/my_user_name/php/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
Note: In the first step you probably want to change Document Root in the default-ssl.conf
file as well for SSL purposes. But as far as I can tell, this isn't required to get a general development environment running.
If you're using Linux Mint (personal opinion, from all distributions this one is making me happy), follow this:
sudo service apache2 restart
In Linux Mint, you go for file /etc/apache2/apache.conf. Replace /var/www with your respective path, and then restart the server (step 3).
That's it.
I was working with LAMP and to change the document root folder, I have edited the default file which is there in the /etc/apache2/sites-available folder.
If you want to do the same, just edit as follows:
DocumentRoot /home/username/new_root_folder
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /home/username/new_root_folder>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
After this, if you type "localhost" in the browser, it will load the /home/username/new_root_folder content.
I had to edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
. The lines are the same as mentioned by RDL.
In Apache version 2.4.18 (Ubuntu).
Open the file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and
search for <Directory /var/www/>
and replace to your directory.
Open file /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf, search for DocumentRoot /var/www/html
and replace it with your DocumentRoot.
Source: Stackoverflow.com