Serve files from outside the directory (safely?)

[yourfate]

Is there a safe way to serve files from outside the directory tree? I want to serve 2 directories I cannot move into the DirectoryLister tree as they are on different file systems. I tried symlinks but that doesn't work because of the open_basedir. Do hard links work? Or bind mounts?

Can I safely remove the open_basedir directive?

Update: I used a nullfs mount (I'm of BSD, so no bind mount), and this works. Any comment if this is somehow a very bad idea?

[PHLAK]

I wouldn't recommend removing/disabling the open_basedir directive. This prevents access to files outside of you Directory Installation (e.g. system files). As you stated, symlinks don't work however I do believe hard links should since they appear as an actual file at the location specified.

I'm unfamiliar with nullfs mounts so can't attest to how good or bad an idea they would be but am glad it worked for you.

One other thought that occurred to me would be to add the directory paths you want to symlink to the open_basedir directive manually. For example

// Set file access restrictions
ini_set('open_basedir', __DIR__:/some/other/directory:/yet/another/folder);

This may even be a configurable option I can add to the app directly. Will have to look into that in the future.