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Apache Main DocumentRoot doesn't exist

I’m trying to find where a reference to /var/www/html still exists in my Apache configuration. When I run apache2ctl -S it says Main DocumentRoot: "/var/www/html", but none of my virual hosts or my main Apache config file point to that directory.

I have tried searching all of the config files using grep -r "var/www/html" /etc/apache2/ but it returns nothing.

There is no <Directory> entry for that path in my /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file (there is one for /var/www, under which I store the virtual hosts).

This configuration quirk bothers my OCD, but I also frequently see these entries in my Apache error log:

[Fri Jun 28 18:19:53.424619 2019] [autoindex:error] [pid 22665] 
[client 209.222.82.167:47376] AH01276: Cannot serve directory
   /var/www/html/: No matching DirectoryIndex 
   (default.php,index.php,index.html,index.htm) found, and server-generated
   directory index forbidden by Options directive

How does Apache decide what the main documentroot is, and how can I change it?

EDIT:

For my sites-available/sites-enabled, I have four files, 000-default.conf, 000-default-le-ssl.conf, 000-www-default.conf, and 000-www-default-le-ssl.conf. The 000-default.conf is a redirect set by certbot to point to the https site and has no DocumentRoot directive. The 000-www-default.conf is identical to 000-default.conf but for the ServerName (one has www and the other doesn’t); the same pattern follows for000-www-default-le.conf and 000-default-le.conf.

Here is the output of some things I’ve tried:

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3

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    As @Nic3500 pointed out, the /var/www/html is the default value for the main DocumentRoot. Changing virtual host configurations does not affect this. However, adding a DocumentRoot directive to apache.conf does change it as reflected in the output of apache2ctl -S.

    In other words, my main DocumentRoot was unconfigured and the default value was used until I explicitly defined it in a global configuration file.


  2. 0

    In Debian/Ubuntu, the default virtual host file: /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf has the DocumentRoot /var/www/html.

    I think the Main DocumentRoot reported by apache2ctl -S is same as the default DocumentRoot. The default DocumentRoot is either defined in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf or in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf. This is described in How to Change Default Apache ‘DocumentRoot’ Directory in Linux. So to change the Main DocumentRoot, you will need to edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf.

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  3. 0

    The DocumentRoot directive Apache’s documentation is clear about its default value:

    Default: DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache/htdocs"

    and Default means the value given by Apache when no one is specified anywhere:

    If the directive has a default value (i.e., if you omit it from your
    configuration entirely, the Apache Web server will behave as though
    you set it to a particular value    )

    And yes, I know /usr/local/apache/htdocs is different from your value /var/www/html but this is just a minor detail which depends on the linux distribution the Apache was built to.

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