can't get mod_userdir to work

["gregory duchesnes" <gregory@icilalune.com>]

Hi,

i'm running debian 3.0r1 + apache 1.3 + php 4... and proftpd.

my problem is that i can't get mod_userdir to work, though my site is
working correctly.

my documentRoot as set in httpd.conf is /var/www/home/web but as i use *
virtualhost the real documentRoot is the one set in the first virtualhost
(which is also /var/www/home/web).

in order to ftp my documentRoot apache runs as a normal user (which i will
call "foo" and who is a member of group users) with home directory set to
/var/www.
all files under /var/www belong to foo:users.

Know i have a user called gregory (that's me :D) member of the users group,
whom i'd like to have his own web space on www.mydomain.com/~gregory
i've then created a public_html folder under is home directory belonging to
him, with a 777 chmod (just for testing) and an index.html file also
belongig to him and with a 777 chmod.

I've loaded the mod_userdir module and uncommented the appropriate lines in
httpd.conf

and when you type www.mydomain.com/~gregory you get a lovely 403 error. any
idea

the problem does not seem to come from my Vhosts, because when i don't
include my Vhosts.conf it still doesn't work.
someone told me it might come from the fact that i've used a wildcard in my
main Directory directive (<Directory /var/www/*/web>) but it does not since
i've tried to set it to <Directory /var/www/home/web> and it still doesn't
work.

Anyone already had the same problem?

thanks

gregory