Trying to understand httpd configuration...

[smilingfrog]

Hi all,
I have just installed fc16 on my laptop for the very first time. I have been using the laptop as a development webserver from home using ubuntu 10.04, and I have wanted to find a different distro.

I have been having troubles with httpd configuration (apache). Most of this is certainly just the learning curve of moving distros, and not being familiar with configurations. There are many threads detailing similar problems that I have been having getting the server up and running, namely not being able to set VirtualHosts to the /home/<user> sub-directories.

I have come up with two questions, that hopefully have simple answers:
1. What is iptables.service, and is it ok to stop if you are on a laptop, and not always behind a firewall?
2. What are SELinux security settings, and what does the output from ls -Z mean?

[pete_1967]

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/index.html

[smilingfrog]

And as a followup, I have been able to get apache to see the files in my home directory, but only if I use

chcon -t httpd_sys_content_t filename

for each and every file in the tree.

Is there a shortcut for this so that I don't have to set this flag with every file I create?

[zharkikh]

Originally Posted by smilingfrog

And as a followup, I have been able to get apache to see the files in my home directory, but only if I use

chcon -t httpd_sys_content_t filename

for each and every file in the tree.

Is there a shortcut for this so that I don't have to set this flag with every file I create?

There is a special content to allow access to the user data:

sudo setsebool -P httpd_read_user_content 1