User web pages for AD users

[rainwadj]

I have a Panther server (10.3.6) attached to an Active Directory service. For discussion purposes, I’ll call this server ‘abc’, with FQDN = abc.domain.edu. I want to provide file services for users, including allowing them to publish web sites using the Sites folder in their personal directories on this server. This should allow them to publish web sites with URLs such as http://abc.domain.edu/~username.

This works fine for local users, but does not work for AD users. I have changed the AD home directory (via our Windows AD administrator) to ‘\\abc\Users\john’ (tried abc.domain.edu in place of abc, too), but I still get the Mac OS X Server File Not Found page when I go to http://abc.domain.edu/~john.

The web server error log shows that Apache is trying to open /Network/Servers/abc/Users/john//Sites (note the double-slash before Sites), so I can understand why Apache can’t open it. What I don’t understand is how and where the AD home directory field is getting mapped. In Work Group Manager’s Inspector pane, /Network/Servers/abc/Users/john/ is in the NFSHomeDirectory field, so I’m assuming that’s where Apache is getting it.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[rainwadj]

Ok, I have found a workaround, but I’m not very happy with it. In the Apache config file (/etc/httpd/httpd.conf), there is a block for the mod_userdir module, which is what points Apache at a specified subdirectory when requests come in for ~username web pages. Looking at the Apache docs for mod_userdir, I found that you can use this:

UserDir /Users/*/Sites

and the asterisk is replaced with the username from http://server/~username. You can also list multiple patterns after UserDir:

UserDir /Users/*/Sites /Faculty/*/Sites /Students/*/Sites

and Apache will try each one in order, then giving an error if the requested page is not found in any of them.

Cool, right? Here are the problems:

1. Making *any* change to any part of the web config in Server Admin removes the UserDir line from httpd.conf.

2. The search has the potential to cause delays. It’s zippy right now, but I only have a dozen user directories for testing purposes. What happens when I start putting everyone out there? Being in the /Students tree means waiting for Apache to search and fail on /Users and /Faculty first.

3. This method doesn’t validate users. If I create a directory in /Users called ‘bananas’ and put a Sites folder in it, I can then go to http://server/~bananas and view the site.

4. This doesn’t solve the overall problem of getting the home directory of the user to map correctly, which means that things like QTSS still won’t work for AD users, since they don’t use Apache’s mod_userdir for mapping.

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