I mentioned to SMD off-list about this because I felt sure it'd turn up 
here anyway, but SELinux requires a few booleans to be enabled for this 
(and other things such as full function of Drupal or MediaWiki + 
plugins). Check the output of "getsebool -a | grep httpd" to get an 
ideas of the relevant ones.

A good resource is "man httpd_selinux" and, of course, your favorite 
search engine.

Whatever you do, do NOT disable SELinux. It is, in my regally 
self-important opinion, critical in this specific case to use every tool 
possible to keep Apache contained (despite the robust testing it gets 
any dynamic stuff happening on any of your users' pages open you to a 
world of hurt without SELinux clamping down).

On 11/22/2011 03:45 AM, Christopher Tooley wrote:
> Hello!
>
> As far as I know, changing *only* ~smd/public_html to 755 should be sufficient.  Changing your home directory to readable/executable by all is not very private unless you're on a machine that has only one user. :)
>
> -Chris
>
> On 2011-11-21, at 9:14 AM, Steven J. Yellin wrote:
>
>>      Try changing permissions on the smd directory (and smd/public_html if
>> necessary) with 'chmod 755 smd', provided you're willing to let all users
>> read the smd directory.
>>
>> Steven Yellin
>>
>> On Mon, 21 Nov 2011, Dr. Sunil M. Dogra wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Thank you for reply,
>>>
>>>
>>> I changed /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf accordingly but still have permission
>>> problem. Any help ?
>>>
>>> drwx--x--x 56 smd      smd       4096 Nov 19 12:18 smd
>>>
>>> #UserDir disable
>>>
>>> UserDir public_html
>>>
>>> that means it should look for /home/smd/public_html/index.html
>>>
>>> but even then It gave following error
>>> Forbidden
>>>
>>> You don't have permission to access /~smd/ on this server.
>>>
>>> With Best Regards
>>> sunil
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Steven J. Yellin
>>> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>>
>>>>    See comments and other lines around every reference to "UserDir" in
>>>> /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.
>>>>
>>>> Steven Yellin
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 21 Nov 2011, Dr. Sunil M. Dogra wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>> May be a easy question.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have web-server  and now would like to create users so that they have
>>>>> personal pages like
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.myserver.com/~user
>>>>>
>>>>> Please suggest ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you
>>>>> With best Regards
>>>>> sunil
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>