After much frustration trying to get Apache to run corectly under EeeBuntu (Ubuntu based Linux distro) I finally discovered that the solution was actually a simple one.
Apache ran fine, and MySQL, PHPMyAdmin and PHP5 were all installed and working correctly. However it was not possible to place a web site into a folder location within my /home/myuser/www folder.
The steps to solve this were actually very simple:
1 – create the www folder and create a dummy index.htm page to test the site with.
2 – Create a new Virtual Host by using terminal to issue the following commands – changing your site name and user folder as necessary.
sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite
gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite
change DocumentRoot line point to /home/myuser/www
change Directory line to point to /home/myuser/www
3 – Ensure the user account folder can be accessed by Apache by changing the permissions.
chmod +x /home/myuser
4 – Secure Apache
gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/ports.conf
change the Listen line to read
Listen 127.0.0.1:80
5 – Enable your new site usinge:
sudo a2ensite mysite
6 – Change folder permissions to ensure the home folder and the user home folder can be browsed by other users, else Apache will return messages about files not found.
7 – Restart Apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
8 – Test your new site http://localhost/