httpd.conf odd entries

[bear]

Had someone contact me to say their site was not working, and sure enough it was trying to open "/home/user/public_html/www/" based on entries in the httpd conf file. Edited, found a few others in the same condition, saved, distilled and when I did, it stated it had created some missing doc roots, once again an extra "www" for some accounts.

I can't seem to locate where it's finding this so I can put a stop to it.
From the distiller (one each of these for all accounts just edited):

info [apache_conf_distiller] Creating missing document root /home/*****/public_html/www for *****

It doesn't actually create the directory, just the pointer to it in httpd.conf.
Any ideas?

Found a thread with this issue, but the answer was to open a ticket, and it's years old so I didn't bump it.

 

[JaredR.]

Look in the userdata for the domain. The userdata used to build the Apache configuration are stored in the format /var/cpanel/userdata/$USER/$DOMAIN, where $USER is the cPanel user, and $DOMAIN is the domain in question.

In that file, you will find a "documentroot:" entry. It is likely this line that needs to be corrected.

 

[bear]

Thanks, Jared, it was indeed in those files, along with a separate pair of files for www.domain.tld and www.domain.tld,v for each of the affected domains (now removed). This was a server I'd taken over, but I'd never come across this before. Would you suggest it was simply misconfigured by the former owner and 'stuck'? There have been new accounts on this box since, and they don't have this issue.

 

[JaredR.]

It is hard to even speculate about what happened without seeing the server. It is possible that it is something the previous owner did. I have not seen reports of this happening, and it is not a default configuration, so it is plausible that it was a custom configuration set up by a former administrator of the server.