title: httpd (apache server) on fedora, symbolic links work but unable to see/access files inside?
body: <p>I'm running httpd on fedora server 35 and want to use it to serve files on my local network. It works fine for files stored under the /var/www/html directory directly (e.g. /var/www/html/videos/video.mp4 can be accessed with http://IP/videos/video.mp4 on any local device).</p>
  <p>I want to serve files stored in other locations in the file system. My plan was to create symbolic links to those locations. When I do that, I run into forbidden errors when trying to access the files (e.g. A video file /files/videos/video.mp4 linked with a sym link /var/www/html/videos-link -&gt; /files/videos/ so that I would (theoretically) access it with http://IP/videos-link/video.mp4</p>
  <p>I can navigate to http://IP/videos-link fine (an Index of DIRECTORY page, but no files are listed), but trying to access the file (http://IP/videos-link/video.mp4) gives me 403 forbidden.</p>
  <p>My config (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) looks like this (it's a bit messy since I've been trying to fix this myself):</p>
  <pre><code>&lt;Directory /&gt;
      Options FollowSymLinks Indexes
      AllowOverride All
      Require all granted
  &lt;/Directory&gt;
  
  ...
  
  &lt;Directory &quot;/var/www&quot;&gt;
      Options +FollowSymLinks +Indexes
      AllowOverride All
      Require all granted
  &lt;/Directory&gt;
  
  ...
  
  &lt;Directory &quot;/var/www/html&quot;&gt;
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
      AllowOverride All
      Require all granted
  &lt;/Directory&gt;
  
  ...
  
  &lt;Directory &quot;/files/videos&quot;&gt;
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
      AllowOverride All
      Require all granted
  &lt;/Directory&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>In attempts to make it work I've made sure the sym link and all the directories have the same owner and that their all 777 so ownership/read perms shouldn't be an issue. Would greatly appreciate some help, thanks.</p>