a little challenge

Last week , I connected 2 macs to my cable modem with a new router.
The router configuration worked, assigned new IP and both mac were able to connect online. After that , I was poking around trying to establish a small file network between the 2 machines (first time doing it) and I think I made an idiotic mistake when I changed the permissions on my hard drive. (get info->details->owner) I changed the selection from system to my username and "applied to enclosed items" which is everything on my machine.
right after that I watched my drive icon simply vanish from the desktop!
So of course I restarted and I got the blue screen of death.
I was able to recover in safe mode trying different things but the procedure that made the system work again involved some scmod#.
The machine booted normally after that and everything seemed to work fine. I immediately performed a permission repair with disk utilities. (I gave up the idea of networking for now)
I also noticed that now, I had 2 new "old preference files " in my root directory.

Now here's my problem:

The thing that no one has been able to figure out.
I get a 403 denied whenever I try to connect to my "Site" folder using the new IP.
E,G : http://192.168.1.100/~myusername . I know apache is working cause I see it when I use either just http://192.168.1.100 or /localhost but wont let me in with my own user name.

I looked into apache conf and I don't see anything weird ( thou, not too sure what to look for)
I repaired permissions for the terminal, I zapped the RAM. Not sure where else to look.
Also, I can see my wife's Mac in the network but looking for mine in her's, nothing but beach ball.

these are the permissions:

erics-Computer:~ eric$ ls -l Sites
total 8
drwxrwx--- 7 eric eric 238 23 Jun 09:07 MYTESTSITE
drwxrwx--- 5 eric eric 170 7 Jul 11:19 data
-rw-rw---- 1 eric eric 317 10 Jul 20:54 index.html
drwxrwx--- 19 eric eric 646 9 Jun 16:26 learn
drwxrwx--- 15 eric eric 510 2 Jul 17:35 rolfing site corrected
drwxrwx--- 14 eric eric 476 2 Jul 17:54 rolfing site corrected copy
drwxrwx--- 10 eric eric 340 14 Jun 19:15 styling
erics-Computer:~ eric$

(My wife said I've been very grumpy for a week)

ok not sure about the not working with apache, but did you try using your wifes computer to conneft to yours viat afp? afp://xxx.xxx.xxx this sometimes will connect 2 computers when the computer hangs up when you open up the network in finder. See if that does anything and if it does, you can create and alias, which will be a work around to the problem you are having. For the apache server.. since there apears to be a problem with permissions since it worked before you changed the permissions, and since disk utility is not picking it up.. First try booting from your os disk and repairing permissions that way. If that does not work, remove apache and re-insall it. This should correct any problems that you are having with this service.

ercw said:

I think I made an idiotic mistake when I changed the permissions on my hard drive. (get info->details->owner) I changed the selection from system to my username and "applied to enclosed items" which is everything on my machine.
right after that I watched my drive icon simply vanish from the desktop!

Click to expand...

What directory/folder did you do the above too? I ask becuase if you done to certain system owned folders, the only way to get back is to change each and every file/directory back to it original owner by hand or reload the system.

rman said:

What directory/folder did you do the above too? I ask becuase if you done to certain system owned folders, the only way to get back is to change each and every file/directory back to it original owner by hand or reload the system.

Click to expand...

I assumed I did it to every folders on the drive since I click the "Apply to inclosed items" button. The question is that I don't know which directory should have the owner as. System or my user name? I did this in the first place because I assumed that the owner should be my user name on everything.
I f I do an "Archive and install" will it fix my problem?

Archive and install would work. You will have still have all of your personal data in separate folder. You will have to reload all of your applications that you installed after you received your system. If you have a good back up, you could just do a clean install.

As for the other problem. A lot of the file and directories many be owned by one of this accounts root, system, and bin, depending on the flavor of unix that you are running.

rman said:

Archive and install would work. You will have still have all of your personal data in separate folder. You will have to reload all of your applications that you installed after you received your system. If you have a good back up, you could just do a clean install.

As for the other problem. A lot of the file and directories many be owned by one of this accounts root, system, and bin, depending on the flavor of unix that you are running.

Click to expand...

I'm thinking about buying a second hard drive for my machine and completely start from sctratch on that drive while retaining the old drive so I can just drag my files over.

rman said:

Archive and install would work. You will have still have all of your personal data in separate folder. You will have to reload all of your applications that you installed after you received your system. If you have a good back up, you could just do a clean install.

As for the other problem. A lot of the file and directories many be owned by one of this accounts root, system, and bin, depending on the flavor of unix that you are running.

Click to expand...

By the way when I click on your reputation button, it crashes my Firefox, sorry

rman said:

Archive and install would work. You will have still have all of your personal data in separate folder. You will have to reload all of your applications that you installed after you received your system. If you have a good back up, you could just do a clean install.

As for the other problem. A lot of the file and directories many be owned by one of this accounts root, system, and bin, depending on the flavor of unix that you are running.

Click to expand...

Hrmmm? I never lose my applications when doing an Archive and Install.