Lighttpd how to configure for folder acces

Troubleshooting
1

infos

  • DietPi version
    G_DIETPI_VERSION_CORE=9
    G_DIETPI_VERSION_SUB=2
    G_DIETPI_VERSION_RC=1
    G_GITBRANCH=‘master’
    G_GITOWNER=‘MichaIng’

  • Distro version | bookworm 0

  • Kernel version | Linux DietPi 6.1.21-v8+ #1642 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr 3 17:24:16 BST 2023 aarch64 GNU/Linux

was a fresh install
on my Raspberry pi 3a+
i just installed software via dietpi-software installer

I testet a lot arround the last days. Now i come to you and want to ask for help,
i read all the treads in this forum and googled a lot was on the lighttpd page and on stack overflow .
never come to an conclusion.

  • Software title lighttpd
  • was a fresh install just together with the chromium kiosk mode from dietpi-software and dietpi-config
  • Can this issue be replicated on a fresh installation of DietPi?
    yes i think it is more of a question for others seems to be normal

yes i also made a link for 10-userdir.conf to → /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled

so it looks now like :

salahtimer@DietPi:/etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled$ ls
10-dir-listing.conf  10-userdir.conf          99-dir-list-folders.conf
10-fastcgi.conf      15-fastcgi-php-fpm.conf  99-unconfigured.conf

my 10-userdir.conf

############################## 
   GNU nano 7.2                               10-userdir.conf
  The userdir module provides a simple way to link user-based directories into
  the global namespace of the webserver.
 
  /usr/share/doc/lighttpd/userdir.txt
 
 server.modules      += ( "mod_userdir" )
 
  the subdirectory of a user's home dir which should be accessible
  under http://$host/~$user
 userdir.path         = "public_html"
 
  The users whose home directories should not be accessible
 userdir.exclude-user = ( "root", "postmaster" )
 #########################################

how to reproduce the failure :

  1. … install lighttpd via dietpi-software
  2. … create new folder under /var/www/ like → files
  3. put an file inside like test.php an echo world
    and you will get an 404 Not Found error if you

Expected behaviour

  • show my html or php site

Actual behaviour

  • i get an : 404 Not Found
    error
2

Hello,
I’m not quite sure if I understand what you are trying to do.
You can just create a folder and put any php/html file inside, you don’t need to create another config file for this.
I made a quick test on my RPi (which also runs lighttpd), I just created a folder inside /var/www and created a index.php with an echo command:
https://jappevpn.ddns.net/test_for_bilal/

This works also for non-index files, like test.php:
https://jappevpn.ddns.net/test_for_bilal/test.php

3

Ah ok I think you wanna create for every user it’s own namespace, right?
So when you use Mod_userdir you link a path from the users home directory into the namespace of the server.
So for example, you request http://www.example.org/~jan/index.html then there must be an index.html in /home/jan/public_html/ (when userdir.path = "public_html" is set).

So serving a file from a subfolder and using mod_userdir are two different things.

4

And you might need to install PHP if you like to serve php file. Actually I’m not sure if it is part of web server installation

5

Thanks for your fast reply

Yes my problem is as you right mentioned.
i can create a folder and also put a file with contend in it. also done via multiple ways. (samba - sftp -or via nano paste and save ).

my problem is, if i want to connect to the lighttpd server via brower 192.168.17x.x/
on root folder i can open my /index.php /index.html file.
But on next level /folder /script /test or /files i have no acces always is a 404 error responding

6

thx Joulinar but my index.php testfile runns on /index.php it shows php contend
but on /files/index.php there is no acces.

7

can you run

lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

this will test your config (also the ones in conf-enabled) for errors.

8

thanks jappe for your reply
no i dont want to create a link to my users/home/ folder i just want it as a bare /var/www/ root server with folders in it like so :slight_smile:

/var/www/index.php → is ok

/var/www/files/index.php -| 404 Not Found
/var/www/js/ -| 404 Not Found
/var/www/test/ -| 404 Not Found

9

Did you create any custom configs, which could maybe be responsible for this?
If you want you can share your whole config and I can have a look.

So a rule like the following could create a 404 error for every sub-directory.

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^($|/)" {
       url.access-deny = ("")

Command to show the whole lighttpd config:

cat /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf && cat /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled/*
10 
lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

do`s nothing ;\
i dont know why ?

11

If there is no reply then there is no error in your config :slight_smile:
Let’s try what I wrote in https://dietpi.com/forum/t/lighttpd-how-to-configure-for-folder-acces/19732/9?u=jappe, if you want.

12 
server.modules = (
        "mod_indexfile",
        "mod_access",
        "mod_alias",
        "mod_redirect",
)

server.document-root = "/var/www/html/"
server.upload-dirs          = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" )
server.errorlog             = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
server.pid-file             = "/run/lighttpd.pid"
server.username             = "www-data"
server.groupname            = "www-data"
server.port                 = 80

# features
#https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Server_feature-flagsDetails
server.feature-flags       += ("server.h2proto" => "enable")
server.feature-flags       += ("server.h2c"     => "enable")
server.feature-flags       += ("server.graceful-shutdown-timeout" => 5)
#server.feature-flags       += ("server.graceful-restart-bg" => "enable")

# strict parsing and normalization of URL for consistency and security
# https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Server_http-parseoptsDetails
# (might need to explicitly set "url-path-2f-decode" = "disable"
#  if a specific application is encoding URLs inside url-path)
server.http-parseopts = (
  "header-strict"           => "enable",# default
  "host-strict"             => "enable",# default
  "host-normalize"          => "enable",# default
  "url-normalize-unreserved"=> "enable",# recommended highly
  "url-normalize-required"  => "enable",# recommended
  "url-ctrls-reject"        => "enable",# recommended
  "url-path-2f-decode"      => "enable",# recommended highly (unless breaks app)
 #"url-path-2f-reject"      => "enable",
  "url-path-dotseg-remove"  => "enable",# recommended highly (unless breaks app)
 #"url-path-dotseg-reject"  => "enable",
 #"url-query-20-plus"       => "enable",# consistency in query string
)

index-file.names            = ( "index.php", "index.html" )
url.access-deny             = ( "~", ".inc" )
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" )

# default listening port for IPv6 falls back to the IPv4 port
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl " + server.port
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.conf.pl"
include "/etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled/*.conf"

#server.compat-module-load   = "disable"
server.modules += (
        "mod_dirlisting",
        "mod_staticfile",
)

dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8"
server.dir-listing   = "enable"
# /usr/share/doc/lighttpd/fastcgi.txt.gz
# http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Docs:ConfigurationOptions#mod_fastcgi-fastcgi

server.modules += ( "mod_fastcgi" )
## The userdir module provides a simple way to link user-based directories into
## the global namespace of the webserver.
##
# /usr/share/doc/lighttpd/userdir.txt

server.modules      += ( "mod_userdir" )

## the subdirectory of a user's home dir which should be accessible
## under http://$host/~$user
userdir.path         = "public_html"

## The users whose home directories should not be accessible
userdir.exclude-user = ( "root", "postmaster" )
# -*- depends: fastcgi -*-
# -*- conflicts: fastcgi-php -*-
# /usr/share/doc/lighttpd/fastcgi.txt.gz
# http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Docs:ConfigurationOptions#mod_fastcgi-fastcgi

## Use PHP-FPM service for PHP via FastCGI
fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>
        ((
                "socket" => "/run/php/php-fpm.sock",
                "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
        ))
)
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/html($|/)" { server.dir-listing = "enable" }
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/html($|/)" {
     dir-listing.activate = "enable"
   }
# override prior index-file.name directive
# to fall back to default index.lighttpd.html
index-file.names := ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.lighttpd.html" )

sorry have done reedit because of mistake before . thanks

13

i will do a new → fresh fresh = install on an other sd card.
it will be the same failure i guess, because i do this a while now.
also by raspberry pi os i think

alright i have to upload as normal my files and folders to

/var/www/ myfolder / myfiles

14

I think this is your problem, so your sub paths should be in /var/www/html/*
Is this the config which came with dietpi or did you change it?
On installation via dietpi-software it should be changed to /var/www (see https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/blob/e87e1ddd6e525da2128b509ac11fc1ab01882297/dietpi/dietpi-software#L3614)

I’m also wondering about the plain text inside your configs, or did you remove the hash tags #, which comment out a line?

15

If you do a reinstallation then you would probably also need to remove your old config file because on installation the old config is migrated.

16

yes sorry i have reedit my post from before i had removed # because i havent put my code in

``` ```

sorry my failure i updatet it

17

ok wait i will checkt this
yes i experimented before, the software comes by it self originally with /var/www/
i have done /var/www/html/ and vice versa experiments i will correct it.
and will do a new fresh install just a little bit.

iam not the fastet :wink:

18

Yea no worries, the thread got a bit mixed up :slight_smile:

Just back up / rename your /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf before reinstallation, so you get a “fresh” one.

19

ok I did a test install of Lighttpd and PHP, plus I created a simple php demo file

dietpi-software install 34 84 89
mkdir /var/www/test
nano /var/www/test/index.php

add something like this
save & exit

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/test/
systemctl restart lighttpd.service

open a web browser and go to URL http://192.168.x.x/test/

It will result in
image

No further configuration changes done on Lighttpd

20

Works even without the the owner-change, if you just read files from the folder.