Apache won't serve local websites after latest update

[freggel.doe]

@DrMartinus

I still wish that such changes would be pointed out more clearly.

It was mentioned in the latest Announcements > Stable Updates thread:

[Stable Update] 2025-09-26 - Kernels, NVIDIA, Systemd, LibreOffice, KDE Software

Apache could not serve local files. The error log contained a familiar error message, “…because search permissions are missing on a component of the path…”, but with a new reason introduced with this update. /etc/systemd/system/httpd.service.d/hardening.conf was not in Apache 2.4.63, but is in Apache 2.4.65. The systemd directive ProtechHome is set to on. A solution is to change the value for ProtectHome to off. After the change, reload daemon-reload and restart httpd.

[Stable Update] 2025-09-26 - Kernels, NVIDIA, Systemd, LibreOffice, KDE Software

Just to prevent misunderstantings: it absolutely can serve local files, just not from a users home directory. There is also ProtectHome=read-only where httpd might read the files but won’t be able to write any, see: