I went through these steps in order to make a symlink directory to use outside of lampp htdocs.
$ mkdir test
$ chmod 777 test
//test is now in /home/Dropbox/test/
//I put an index.html with 777 perms in it.
$ cd /opt/lampp/htdocs/
$ sudo ln -s /home/Dropbox/test/ /opt/lampp/htdocs/$USER
//my user appears as symlink directory in htdocs.
$ /opt/lampp/lampp stop
$ /opt/lampp/lampp start
//lampp is now restarted
I type in localhost/myusername and get a 404 error... object not found.
Note that I can create regular directories and .html/.php files in the htdocs directory, but I cannot do any symlink directories or .html/.php files, they will not load.
Thank you for input!
httpd conf (only the parts involving SymLinks)
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
#XAMPP
#Order deny,allow
#Deny from all
</Directory>
<Directory "/opt/lampp/htdocs/">
#
# Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",
# or any combination of:
# Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews
#
# Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All"
# doesn't give it to you.
#
# The Options directive is both complicated and important. Please see
# http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options
# for more information.
#
#Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
# XAMPP
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI Includes
#
# AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
# It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
# Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
#
#AllowOverride None
# since XAMPP 1.4:
AllowOverride All
#
# Controls who can get stuff from this server.
#
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
error_log
$ tail -f error_log
[Fri Dec 23 13:55:50 2011] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /opt/lampp/htdocs/*myusername*
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:02 2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:08 2011] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /opt/lampp/bin/suexec)
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:08 2011] [warn] RSA server certificate is a CA certificate (BasicConstraints: CA == TRUE !?)
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:08 2011] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `localhost' does NOT match server name!?
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:08 2011] [notice] Digest: generating secret for digest authentication ...
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:08 2011] [notice] Digest: done
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:09 2011] [warn] RSA server certificate is a CA certificate (BasicConstraints: CA == TRUE !?)
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:09 2011] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `localhost' does NOT match server name!?
[Fri Dec 23 13:56:09 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.21 (Unix) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.21 OpenSSL/1.0.0c PHP/5.3.8 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.5 Perl/v5.10.1 configured -- resuming normal operations
access_log
$ tail -f access_log
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:41:27 -0500] "GET /work HTTP/1.1" 403 1111
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:41:27 -0500] "GET /work HTTP/1.1" 403 1111
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:41:28 -0500] "GET /work HTTP/1.1" 403 1111
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:47 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 -
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:47 -0500] "GET /xampp/ HTTP/1.1" 200 588
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:47 -0500] "GET /xampp/head.php HTTP/1.1" 200 1362
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:47 -0500] "GET /xampp/navi.php HTTP/1.1" 200 2290
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:47 -0500] "GET /xampp/start.php HTTP/1.1" 200 786
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:47 -0500] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 200 30894
127.0.0.1 - - [23/Dec/2011:13:55:50 -0500] "GET /work HTTP/1.1" 403 1111
Permissions of /opt/lampp/htdocs/
drwxr-xr-x 4 nobody root 4096 2011-12-23 13:32 htdocs
Permissions of /opt/lampp/htdocs/*myusername*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 39 2011-12-23 13:12 myusername
Permissions of /home/Dropbox/test/
drwxr-xr-x 2 work work 4096 2011-12-23 13:10 myusername