Ubuntu – Changing the Home folder’s owner

The directories above your webroot should have the execute bit set to allow Apache descend into the directories.

If you have your webroot located at /home/user/htdocs, the /, /home, /home/user and /home/user/htdocs should have the execute bit set.

The above solution "works", but it's not ideal. If you've created a folder, Apache cannot write to it. The reverse happens too.

This can be "fixed" by setting umask 0007 and adding yourself to the Apache group (www-data if I'm not mistaken), so that newly created files and folders are writeable by the group.

Alternatively, you can install an alternative Apache MPM: Apache2 MPM ITK (info on configuring) and adjust the configuration so Apache runs under your user.

Elder Geek is right about the UID.

The steps to check the problem goes like this:

$ cd /home/[user-name]
$ ls -la 

You might see the UID is appeared as number rather than your current user name, e.g. appear as 1002

drwxr-xr-x  2 (1002) ...bla bla... 40 Mei  22  2014 Documents

You can check your current user UID

$ cat /etc/passwd | grep [user-name]
[user-name]:x:1000:1000:[user-name] ...bla bla bla

If they are different (1002!=1000) than we know this is the problem.

Solution:

$ chmod -R [user-name]:[group-name] /home/[user-name]

You may now try to login.

Cheers : )