How to get a personal homepage

So you want your personal home page at http://www.phys.ethz.ch/~your_user_name/?

Note: ${HOME} refers to your home directory on the D-PHYS servers. This is automatically available on the managed workstations (either ${HOME} on Linux and OSX, or the H: drive on Windows). For self managed workstations read [how to use the fileservers].

Here's how to get it working:

1. mkdir ${HOME}/public_html
2. chmod 755 ${HOME}/public_html
3. $EDITOR ${HOME}/public_html/index.html
4. $BROWSER http://www.phys.ethz.ch/~your_user_name/

1. Create a directory “public_html” in your home directory (this is the directory ”/home/your_user_name/” with your_user_name replaced by your user name. It is not your desktop neither the directory ”/home/”)
2. Make it at least world accessible. You home directory does not need to be world accessible or readable though.
3. Create a file called “index.html” in that newly created directory and put some HTML in it. See http://de.selfhtml.org/ for a good, easy to understand and though comprehensive HTML documentation in German.
4. Point your favourite web browser to http://www.phys.ethz.ch/~your_user_name/

As example, we will create a password protected subdirectory “foo” for the user “johndoe” at http://www.phys.ethz.ch/~johndoe/foo/. There will be two users with access: One will be “bar” with password “foobar”, the other will be “fnord” with password “gna”. Change those values appropriately for your case.

1. Create the directory, if it doesn't exist. It must be somewhere under the public_html directory, e.g. with

   mkdir ${HOME}/public_html/foo

   It cannot be a symbolic link to somewhere outside the public_html directory.

2. Create a file with name ”.htaccess” in that directory with the following content:

   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "This directory is password protected"
   AuthUserFile /public/johndoe/foo/.htpasswd
   require valid-user
   

3. Execute the following command on one of our managed Linux workstations:

   htpasswd -b -c ${HOME}/public_html/foo/.htpasswd bar foobar

   (You may also ommit the ”-b” parameter and the password. Then you have to type it twice and blindly afterwards. The ”-c” parameter is only needed the first time to create the ”.htpasswd” file.)

4. Make sure, the .htpasswd and .htaccess files are world-readable, e.g. with

   chmod 644 ${HOME}/public_html/foo/.ht*

   otherwise the webserver won't have access to those files. Again, if you have your home directory unaccessable for others, they won't get access, even if they know the location of those files. The webserver won't give them out either, even not with password.

5. If you want to add additional users, additionally execute the following command on one of our managed Linux workstations:

   htpasswd -b ${HOME}/public_html/foo/.htpasswd fnord gna

   (You may also ommit the ”-b” parameter and the password. Then you have to type it twice and blindly afterwards.)

See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/auth.html for the gory details and further documentation.