[Pkg-erlang-devel] Bug#730381: yaws: Please change the default document root to /var/www/html

[arno at debian.org]

Package: yaws
Severity: important
User: debian-apache at lists.debian.org
Usertags: default-doc-root

Hello,

as discussed last year in <4F8A1567.80906 at debian.org> [1] I'd now
take the current development cycle to actually change the default
Document Root in Debian's http servers. The reasons are outlined in
the referenced mailing list thread, but once again, in short:

Our webservers set the default document root to /var/www, whereas
site-local administrators tend to use /var/www/example.com. This has
security implications if visitors access the default document root,
bypassing the /supposed/ document root of example.com. That's
problematic if sensitive data is placeѕ outside the supposed
document root (e.g. consider a hypothetical
/var/www/example-com-db.conf configuration file).

The consensus from last year's discussion was to use
/var/www/<something> as a default document root instead, giving users
a parent directory for HTTP Ñ•ervers which is not served to the
public.

Personally I don't care about the actual directory name of
<something>, and /var/www/default would probably be the best choice
to highlight its designed use. However, to minimize the delta to
other distributions I suggest to make the default document root
/var/www/html - which is what Fedora/RHEL/CentOS is using already.

Apache will make this change for the next upload coming up. Please
follow us to have a consistent default document root across
webservers in Debian. 

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/04/msg00301.html