Apache and the Document Root

[Retriever II]

This problem is probably a bit different than you thought when you looked at the title.

Basicly, I have my public directory that I set my document root to, which I can access just fine by typing int my ip or hostname. Peachy. Moving on then. In addition, I traditionally had several userdirs (when I ran apache under windows) for different script sets I was working on. These also work, with one exception. The document root points to the document root set in the config file, but I don't know how to get it to point to the user directory instead (which it did under windows).

For example:
http://h0050BF78AF35.ne.client2.attbi.com
points to: /home/www/www
Document root: /home/www/www

http://h0050BF78AF35.ne.client2.attbi.com/~hocuspocus
points to /home/hocuspocus/www
Document root: /home/www/www

I want the document root to match the user, but for the life of me I can't seem to get it to work. I've also been experimenting with vHosts to do this, and I've been able to do it, but I can't resolve the names without adding them to my hosts file, so I havea feeling I'd need to rely on an external service to accomplish this.

Now, to sum up what I'm looking to do, I don't care if I have to use the userdir method, or vhosts, as long as the document root is set correctly, and I don't need to rely on an external service, like a dns service. All I've got to work with that I know for fact will not change is my hostname. Any ideas what I could do to get the document root correct for userdirs, or if I can accomplish vHosts without relying on an external service (which I'm doubting)?

[sschlueter]

Mh, maybe I'm missing something but it seems to be that this can easily be done using the mod_userdir module. "~hocuspocus" would then point to "/home/hocuspocus/public_html/". And if it's "public_html" that bothers you, you can change that. See /etc/apache2/conf/commonapache2.conf:

[Retriever II]

I am doing that, and it does point to /home/hocuspocus/www

BUT

I need the document root that apache reports when viewing pages to also point to that, and this is the first time I've had this kind of problem before. As I said, in Windows the document root changed with the user specified instead of pointing to the 'default' directory.