Apache reference Home dir NOT username

Hello all, thanks in advance for any help.

I'm going to make this short and sweet, without getting into too much
detail.


On our system, your username = your full name. This is a problem that
we can not change, so what we did was make your home dir your intials
+ uid.

so for example

Username: Johnsmith
Home Dir : js15932

Unfortunatly, http://blah/~js15932 does NOT work, but http://blah/~johnsmith
DOES.

I'm told this is because apache references usernames, not homedir.

Is there an easy way to change this?

We don't want to "publish" full names so we need http://blah/~js15932
to work and their username not to.

THANKS!! :)

Re: Apache reference Home dir NOT username

On Sep 5, 11:00 pm, Ek-o wrote:
> Hello all, thanks in advance for any help.
>
> I'm going to make this short and sweet, without getting into too much
> detail.
>
> On our system, your username = your full name. This is a problem that
> we can not change, so what we did was make your home dir your intials
> + uid.
>
> so for example
>
> Username: Johnsmith
> Home Dir : js15932
>
> Unfortunatly,http://blah/~js15932does NOT work, buthttp://blah/~johnsmith
> DOES.
>
> I'm told this is because apache references usernames, not homedir.
>
> Is there an easy way to change this?
>
> We don't want to "publish" full names so we needhttp://blah/~js15932
> to work and their username not to.
>
> THANKS!! :)

apache uses the filesystem to locate files, you will have to make sure
the folders are set up for those initials+uid
else where does apache go? you will get a lot of file not found 404s.
you could just symlink the initials+uid to the real folder and use
followymlinks in the options, but somewhere along the line this will
require manual creation, unless of course you script it. hope yuo dont
have too many users!

Re: Apache reference Home dir NOT username

On Sep 5, 11:00 pm, Ek-o wrote:
> Hello all, thanks in advance for any help.
>
> I'm going to make this short and sweet, without getting into too much
> detail.
>
> On our system, your username = your full name. This is a problem that
> we can not change, so what we did was make your home dir your intials
> + uid.
>
> so for example
>
> Username: Johnsmith
> Home Dir : js15932
>
> Unfortunatly,http://blah/~js15932does NOT work, buthttp://blah/~johnsmith
> DOES.
>
> I'm told this is because apache references usernames, not homedir.
>
> Is there an easy way to change this?
>
> We don't want to "publish" full names so we needhttp://blah/~js15932
> to work and their username not to.
>
> THANKS!! :)

of course that was followsymlinks, and manual attention (rather than
creation which implies directory creation which is what symlinking
avoids!)
who decided to use full names, and then to not "publish" the names?? I
mean names are pretty public bits of data already arent they, and not
that hard to find out.
BTW are the full names separated by periods as in
matthew.farey (my full name - oh know the world will be able to see
it)
if they are then you could use a regular expression to map the names
to the intials, and if the uids are not random then you could perform
a look up using a script. more work, and theres a risk the script will
hang if not written properly, but this kind of lookup is found in the
manual for other things:
rewritemap