I swear I heard someone once say that control panels supposedly made things

* * * * *

I swear I heard someone once say that control panels supposedly made things
easier

Sigh.

Just received the following ticket:

> Client uploaded their own work on the site and need to change the document
> root for the domain: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
>
> Please set it from “/var/www/html/” to “/var/www/html/app/webroot/”
>
> The site is on: XXXXXX
>

No problem, right? Just go into the Apache [1] configuration file and change
DocumentRoot for the virtual domain in question. Trivial.

Only, the server the site is on has a <shudder> control panel on it, and
whenever there is a <shudder> control panel involved, even the most trivial
of changes suddenly involves rocket science [I thought I wrote about
redirects involving a control panel, but I've yet to find an entry that does.
Guess what's coming up next [2]? —Sean]

Just for laughs, I decided to change DocumentRoot on the virtual site in
question and make a change via the <shudder> control panel and just as I
expected, my changes did not survive Insipid's mucking about.

A few searches revealed this bit of wisdom:

> The following FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) discusses how you can change
> httpd.conf on a per-site basis or globally such that the changes are not
> wiped out by XXXXXXXXXXX.
>
> http://www.XXXXXXXXX/support/wpls/faqs/3.6.html
>

Wonderful! I thought. That's **exactly** what I need. I click on the link—

> 404
>

Oh, lovely I thought. I check the date on the answer I found, and it's dated
July 8^th, 2002. I guess Insipid doesn't quite realize that cool URL (Uniform
Resource Locator)s don't change [3].

So, I go to the Insipid site and try searching on “FAQ”. The results of that
search were:

> 404
>

But I was at some subdomain of the Insipid site. Okay, I went to the main
page, searched for “FAQ” and got much better results. Apparently, the Insipid
subdomain uses some now dead search engine, while the main Insipid site uses
Google [4]. Ah, I see a link labeled “Insipid Forum—FAQ” and click that.

I'm right back at the main Insipid page. Brilliant! Instead of serving up a
“Page Not Found” page, they simply redirect to the main page. Wunderbar!

Poking around some more, it seems that the inspired leadership at Insipid has
felt that there is no longer any need for any forums at their site, and thus,
it's gone. I keep getting the main page.

So far, my searches have lead to pages that are either missing, or selling
support, or are simply nothing more than link farms—ah wait! It seems Insipid
was bought out by the company Perpendicular. Okay, try their site and look
for “Insipid FAQ”.

And nothing that will help me.

Oh wait, this seems promising:

> Document Root Problem with Ensim
>
> February 8, 2006
>
> I am trying to point the default /var/www/html folder to a subfolder of the
> site. I am trying to acomplish this by doing the following:
>
> # pico /etc/httpd/conf/virtual/siteXX
>
> <VirtualHost XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:80>
>
> ServerName XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
> ServerAdmin [email protected]
> DocumentRoot /home/virtual/siteXX/fst/var/www/html/toanother/folder
> RewriteEngine on
>
> # /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
>
> After Apache restarts I am placed in the new folder structure, but the PHP
> code on the page is not being parsed.
>
> I am at a loss as to what the problem may be. Any help is appreciated.
>

Okay … where are the answers? Answers? Um … answers? Nothing on that page. Go
up one level, find the link to that page, and see “Replies: 0”.

Well XXXX! In **three years** no one has answered this person's cry for help!

On a lark, I decided to try the following:

> GenericRootPrompt# ls -l
> total 20
> total 20
> drwxr-xr-x 2 admin229 admin229 4096 May 27 2008 cgi-bin
> drwxr-xr-x 9 admin229 admin229 4096 Mar 25 01:06 html
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 27 2008 icons
> drwxr-xr-x 2 admin229 admin229 4096 May 27 2008 interpreters
> drwxr-xr-x 2 admin229 admin229 4096 May 27 2008 usage
> GenericRootPrompt# mv html html.orig
> GenericGootPrompt# ln -s html.orig/app/webroot/ html
> GenericRootPrmopt# ls -l
> total 20
> drwxr-xr-x 2 admin229 admin229 4096 May 27 2008 cgi-bin
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Mar 27 16:19 html -> html.orig/app/webroot/
> drwxr-xr-x 9 admin229 admin229 4096 Mar 25 01:06 html.orig
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 27 2008 icons
> drwxr-xr-x 2 admin229 admin229 4096 May 27 2008 interpreters
> drwxr-xr-x 2 admin229 admin229 4096 May 27 2008 usage
> GenericRootPrompt#
>

It was a nice try, but it didn't work.

Can somebody remind me why we're using control panels?

[1] http://httpd.apache.org/
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2009/03/27.3
[3] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
[4] http://www.google.com/

Email author at [email protected]