I have an error message "DocumentRoot must be a directory"

I have an error message "DocumentRoot must be a directory"

am 15.03.2005 08:12:33 von thisrule

I changed DocumentRoot in httpd.conf /var/www/html to /www.
Then I restart httpd, following error message, "DocumentRoot must be a
directory".
But if DocumentRoot is other directory such as /usr, /var or /home,
httpd works well.
Only if DocumentRoot is /www, httpd doesn't work.

This is my httpd.conf.
ServerTokens OS
ServerRoot "/etc/httpd"
PidFile run/httpd.pid
Timeout 120
KeepAlive Off
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15


StartServers 8
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 20
ServerLimit 256
MaxClients 256
MaxRequestsPerChild 4000



StartServers 2
MaxClients 150
MinSpareThreads 25
MaxSpareThreads 75
ThreadsPerChild 25
MaxRequestsPerChild 0


Listen 8080

LoadModule access_module modules/mod_access.so
LoadModule auth_module modules/mod_auth.so
LoadModule auth_anon_module modules/mod_auth_anon.so
LoadModule auth_dbm_module modules/mod_auth_dbm.so
LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so
LoadModule ldap_module modules/mod_ldap.so
LoadModule auth_ldap_module modules/mod_auth_ldap.so
LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so
LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so
LoadModule env_module modules/mod_env.so
LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so
LoadModule cern_meta_module modules/mod_cern_meta.so
LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so
LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so
LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so
LoadModule usertrack_module modules/mod_usertrack.so
LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so
LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so
LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so
LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so
LoadModule asis_module modules/mod_asis.so
LoadModule info_module modules/mod_info.so
LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.soLoadModule
vhost_alias_module modules/mod_vhost_alias.so
LoadModule negotiation_module modules/mod_negotiation.so
LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so
LoadModule imap_module modules/mod_imap.so
LoadModule actions_module modules/mod_actions.so
LoadModule speling_module modules/mod_speling.so
LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so
LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_ftp_module modules/mod_proxy_ftp.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.so
LoadModule cache_module modules/mod_cache.so
LoadModule suexec_module modules/mod_suexec.so
LoadModule disk_cache_module modules/mod_disk_cache.so
LoadModule file_cache_module modules/mod_file_cache.so
LoadModule mem_cache_module modules/mod_mem_cache.so
LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so

Include conf.d/*.conf

User apache
Group apache

ServerAdmin root@localhost

ServerName 12.25.162.90:8080

UseCanonicalName Off

DocumentRoot "/www"


Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None



AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all



UserDir public_html


DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var
AccessFileName .htaccess


Order allow,deny
Deny from all


TypesConfig /etc/mime.types
DefaultType text/plain


MIMEMagicFile conf/magic


HostnameLookups Off

ErrorLog logs/error_log

LogLevel warn

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\"
\"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent

CustomLog logs/access_log combined

ServerSignature On

Alias /icons/ "/var/www/icons/"


Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all



# Location of the WebDAV lock database.
DAVLockDB /var/lib/dav/lockdb


ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"


AllowOverride None
Options None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

IndexOptions FancyIndexing VersionSort NameWidth=*

AddIconByEncoding (CMP,/icons/compressed.gif) x-compress x-gzip

AddIconByType (TXT,/icons/text.gif) text/*
AddIconByType (IMG,/icons/image2.gif) image/*
AddIconByType (SND,/icons/sound2.gif) audio/*
AddIconByType (VID,/icons/movie.gif) video/*

AddIcon /icons/binary.gif .bin .exe
AddIcon /icons/binhex.gif .hqx
AddIcon /icons/tar.gif .tar
AddIcon /icons/world2.gif .wrl .wrl.gz .vrml .vrm .iv
AddIcon /icons/compressed.gif .Z .z .tgz .gz .zip
AddIcon /icons/a.gif .ps .ai .eps
AddIcon /icons/layout.gif .html .shtml .htm .pdf
AddIcon /icons/text.gif .txt
AddIcon /icons/c.gif .c
AddIcon /icons/p.gif .pl .py
AddIcon /icons/f.gif .for
AddIcon /icons/dvi.gif .dvi
AddIcon /icons/uuencoded.gif .uu
AddIcon /icons/script.gif .conf .sh .shar .csh .ksh .tcl
AddIcon /icons/tex.gif .tex
AddIcon /icons/bomb.gif coreAddIcon /icons/back.gif ..
AddIcon /icons/hand.right.gif README
AddIcon /icons/folder.gif ^^DIRECTORY^^
AddIcon /icons/blank.gif ^^BLANKICON^^

DefaultIcon /icons/unknown.gif

ReadmeName README.html
HeaderName HEADER.html

IndexIgnore .??* *~ *# HEADER* README* RCS CVS *,v *,t

AddLanguage ca .ca
AddLanguage cs .cz .cs
AddLanguage da .dk
AddLanguage de .de
AddLanguage el .el
AddLanguage en .en
AddLanguage eo .eo
AddLanguage es .es
AddLanguage et .et
AddLanguage fr .fr
AddLanguage he .he
AddLanguage hr .hr
AddLanguage it .it
AddLanguage ja .ja
AddLanguage ko .ko
AddLanguage ltz .ltz
AddLanguage nl .nl
AddLanguage nn .nn
AddLanguage no .no
AddLanguage pl .po
AddLanguage pt .pt
AddLanguage pt-BR .pt-br
AddLanguage ru .ru
AddLanguage sv .sv
AddLanguage zh-CN .zh-cn
AddLanguage zh-TW .zh-tw

LanguagePriority en ca cs da de el eo es et fr he hr it ja ko ltz nl nn
no pl pt pt-BR ru sv zh

ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback

AddDefaultCharset EUC-KR

AddCharset ISO-8859-1 .iso8859-1 .latin1
AddCharset ISO-8859-2 .iso8859-2 .latin2 .cen
AddCharset ISO-8859-3 .iso8859-3 .latin3
AddCharset ISO-8859-4 .iso8859-4 .latin4
AddCharset ISO-8859-5 .iso8859-5 .latin5 .cyr .iso-ru
AddCharset ISO-8859-6 .iso8859-6 .latin6 .arb
AddCharset ISO-8859-7 .iso8859-7 .latin7 .grk
AddCharset ISO-8859-8 .iso8859-8 .latin8 .heb
AddCharset ISO-8859-9 .iso8859-9 .latin9 .trk
AddCharset ISO-2022-JP .iso2022-jp .jis
AddCharset ISO-2022-KR .iso2022-kr .kis
AddCharset ISO-2022-CN .iso2022-cn .cis
AddCharset Big5 .Big5 .big5
AddCharset WINDOWS-1251 .cp-1251 .win-1251
AddCharset CP866 .cp866
AddCharset KOI8-r .koi8-r .koi8-ru
AddCharset KOI8-ru .koi8-uk .ua
AddCharset ISO-10646-UCS-2 .ucs2
AddCharset ISO-10646-UCS-4 .ucs4
AddCharset UTF-8 .utf8

AddCharset GB2312 .gb2312 .gb
AddCharset utf-7 .utf7
AddCharset utf-8 .utf8
AddCharset big5 .big5 .b5
AddCharset EUC-TW .euc-tw
AddCharset EUC-JP .euc-jp
AddCharset EUC-KR .euc-kr
AddCharset shift_jis .sjis

AddType application/x-compress .Z
AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz

AddHandler imap-file map

AddHandler type-map var

AddType text/html .shtml
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml

Alias /error/ "/var/www/error/"




AllowOverride None
Options IncludesNoExec
AddOutputFilter Includes html
AddHandler type-map var
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
LanguagePriority en es de fr
ForceLanguagePriority Pr




BrowserMatch "Mozilla/2" nokeepalive
BrowserMatch "MSIE 4\.0b2;" nokeepalive downgrade-1.0
force-response-1.0
BrowserMatch "RealPlayer 4\.0" force-response-1.0
BrowserMatch "Java/1\.0" force-response-1.0
BrowserMatch "JDK/1\.0" force-response-1.0

BrowserMatch "Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider"
redirect-carefully
BrowserMatch "^WebDrive" redirect-carefully
BrowserMatch "^WebDAVFS/1.[012]" redirect-carefully
BrowserMatch "^gnome-vfs" redirect-carefullyefer Fallback

Re: I have an error message "DocumentRoot must be a directory"

am 15.03.2005 08:43:40 von unknown

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: I have an error message "DocumentRoot must be a directory"

am 15.03.2005 11:29:50 von thisrule

But if I change DocumentRoot to /usr or /home, why does httpd work good?

Re: I have an error message "DocumentRoot must be a directory"

am 01.04.2005 09:41:45 von dan_delspam

Hello, thisrule.

You probably got "DocumentRoot must be a directory" error even it is really a
directory because of SELinux extensions. Run
system-config-securitylevel (or redhat-config-securitylevel) to
disable SELinux for httpd or give SELinux permissions to that
directory:
chcon -R -h -t httpd_sys_content_t /path/to/directory

I faced exactly the same problem and this solved it.
This happens if you have a 2.6 linux kernel, or RHEL 4 likes.

More help at: http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinux-faq-fc3/index.html