Silk Web Hosting: How To

Modified

SELinux Permissions

In additional to traditional Unix file permissions, your files are protected by SELinux (“Security Enhanced Linux”), which tags files in a way that describes which applications can access them.

View SELinux file contexts

If you need to see the specific SELinux file contexts, add the Z flag to your command. For example:

$ ls -laZ

Find/Repair broken SELinux file contexts

Your silk site should be configured to inherit parent directory SELinux file contexts. However, some types of file operations (like move, or un-tarring) can cause those file contexts to be set incorrectly. This may cause your site to function incorrectly. For instance, if the httpd_user_content_t is not set for ~/www-root, then the web server will be unable to read files from that directory. To check if your files have the correct SELinux contexts, you can use the fixfiles command.

For example: see if all the file contexts in ~/www-root are as expected:

$ fixfiles check ~/www-root

To restore the default file contexts for ~/www-root:

$ fixfiles restore ~/www-root

Additional silk sites

If you would like an additional, separate web site in your account on silk, please contact SAA for assistance. A new site would have a name such as mysubsite.mynetid.w3.uvm.edu and would have its own document root and logs directory.

Additional hostnames for silk sites

If needed, aliases can be added for existing silk sites so that multiple hostnames reach the same web site. This is generally best kept to things like adding an optional “www.” to your site name. Contact SAA for assistance.

Host another domain on silk

If you would like a DNS domain that you own to have web pages hosted on silk, contact SAA for assistance. If approved, an additional document root and logs directory for this domain will be set up under your silk account.

SSL/TLS certificates for these sites can either be set up by us for free via Let’s Encrypt, or you can provide your own purchased from a third party vendor.