This is correct. Permissions on a higher (ie /home) level directory do
not necessarily allow access to a lower level directory (ie /home/user).
I may have my syntax The owner
and group rights determine who can read any given directory. By
default a user's directory is readable only by the user. If modify
this permissions to allow any one in the group to read that directory
then any user in the group can read that directory. Some distros create
unique groups for each user. /home should be world readable on any
webserver, but not /home/user.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monty J. Harder [mailto:lists@kc.rr.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 11:57 AM
> To: Jonathan Hutchins; kclug@kclug.org
> Subject: Re: Apache confusion
> 
> 
> On Wednesday 19 June 2002 09:06 pm, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> 
> > Ok, this doesn't make sense.  If I make /home world 
> readable, anybody can
> > CD to anybody else's home directory.  That ain't right.  If 
> I don't, Apache
> > can't see the user files, but users are supposed to put 
> their files in
> > /home/USER/www.  Huh?
> 
> monster: ~> ls -ld ..
> drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root         4096 Dec 23 20:29 ..
> 
> monster: ~> cd ../jessica
> bash: cd: ../jessica: Permission denied
> 
> monster: ~> ls -l ..
> total 8
> drwx------   10 jessica  jessica      4096 Jun 19 09:34 jessica
> drwx------   15 monster  monster      4096 Jun 19 11:54 monster
> 
> It seems as if the permissions that protect the user 
> directories from being 
> cd'ed are the permissions on the directory itself.
> 
> 
> majordomo@kclug.org
>