More on access control for LAS

["Jennifer M. Adams" <jma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Experts,

My GrADS-enabled version of LAS is working (thanks, Joe!)
and I am getting ready to serve up some real-time forecast
data in GRIB format. Here's the thing: if the data set I'm
serving is not located underneath the $LASROOT directory,
then the LAS's execution of GrADS can't see the file and I
can't open it, even for read-only purposes. If I execute
GrADS outside the LAS and run the very same script that the
LAS tried to run, it works just fine. When I copied the data
set so it would be underneath $LASROOT, then the LAS worked
perfectly. 

It smells like an apache configuration problem, and I found
a brief exchange on a similar issue in the email archives.
Steve Cousins referred to the Directory Tag in the
httpd.conf file, and although his solution was for
*restricting* access to certain data directories, I think
the implementation is probably similar. Here's what we've
added, where /var/homes/wxdata/dodsdata is the top directory
where the GRIB data is located: 

<Directory "/var/homes/wxdata/dodsdata">
   Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

Unfortunately, this change made no difference to the LAS,
even after re-configuring and shift-reloading. I'd like the
LAS to access this directory and anything underneath it. The
data files there are all readable by everyone (i.e.,
-rw-rw-r--) Can anyone tell me what would be the right way
to configure it? 

Respectfully submitted,
Jennifer

-- 
----------------------------------------
Jennifer Miletta Adams
Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Calverton, MD 20705-3106
Phone: (301)902-1278 or (301)595-7000
Fax:   (301)595-9793
Email: jma@cola.iges.org