How to allow acces to a symbolic link in my ~/Sites/ for Apache under Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2

Solution 1:

Here is a blog post I wrote when I was trying to figure out how to do exactly what you are trying to do.

1. Enable Web Sharing on the MAC by going to System Prefrences —> Sharing —> Check Enable Web Sharing

2. Edit your username.conf file located in /private/etc/apache2/users and add the “FollowSymLinks” directive:

   <Directory "/Users/yourUserName/Sites/">
       Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride None
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>
   

3. Edit the /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf file and make sure the line under “# Virtual hosts” is not commented out, like so:

   Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
   

4. Edit the /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf file and add:

   <VirtualHost *:80>  
       <Directory /Users/yourUserName/Sites/MyWebSite.com>
           Options +FollowSymlinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
           AllowOverride All
       </Directory>
     DocumentRoot /Users/yourUserName/Sites/MyWebSite
     ServerName MyWebSite.local
   </VirtualHost>
   

5. Edit the /etc/hosts file and add this at the top:

   127.0.0.1 MyWebSite.local
   

6. Make a Symlink to link your Code directory to one in the Sites directory.

   ln -s ~/Code/MyWebSite ~/Sites/MyWebSite
   

7. Restart apache

Solution 2:

In fact only the first 2 steps from Emjay's answer plus an apache restart are necessary, here is what worked for me:

1. Enable Web Sharing on the MAC by going to System Prefrences —> Sharing —> Check enabled Web Sharing

2. Edit your username.conf file located in /private/etc/apache2/users and add the FollowSymLinks directive:

   <Directory "/Users/yourUserName/Sites/">
       Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride None
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>
   

3. check your apache config

   sudo apachectl -t

4. restart apache

   sudo apachectl restart

Now Apache will serve the symbolic links under your Sites directory.

Solution 3:

I was getting 403 forbidden error. What solved my problem is in httpd-vhosts.conf, I replaced the below config

<Location "/modulename">
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Location>

with

<Location "/modulename">
  Require all granted
</Location>

Did the same for all the Location tags. It solved the permission issue.