Safe Path outside Document Root

[Napoleon]

[Ubuntu 14.04, Apache2.4, php5 fastcgi, Joomla 3.4, Virtumart 3]

Hi,

  I am new to Virtumart and am having a little trouble with SAFE PATH.  The best option suggested, and with which I agree, is to have it located outside document root and not accessible through a URL, but I'm having trouble setting this up.  I have already read the post here and on gavick but they don't answer what I'm trying to do.

  My Joomla installation is in the Document Root folder of my site (not a sub-folder) and I have access to the folders above my document root; e.g. /home/me, /bin, /etc, ...  A more formal way of expressing this is that my server is chrooted using jailkit.  The absolute path to my doc root is /var/www/me/web.
  So I created a folder to use as my Safe path in '/var/www/me/vmfiles' and set its permissions to 777 (for now) with the owner/group being my account (of course).  I then put that path into the Safe Path field in VM with a trailing '/'.  Having done this, I was surprised that VM was still complaining that it can't access that folder.

I can create an alias to that folder in my virtual host config file, but then it becomes accessible from a URL.  So I'm wondering how to set this up so that it can't be accessed through a URL.  Does VM use CGI?

Cheers,
Nap

[GJC Web Design]

so your Joomla and VM install are in /var/www/me/web?

then i see no reason why VM couldn't access /var/www/me/vmfiles/

try 755.. some servers hate 777 

but other than that this is where i would put my safe path in this example..

what is e.g. the temp path showing in the joomla config? And I assume it works

[Napoleon]

Joomla's Temp folder is /var/www/me/web/tmp, which is inside Doc Root, and my Joomla install is not complaining about it.
I tried 755 and 775 on /var/www/me/vmfiles, but it's still not working. 

[GJC Web Design]

with that temp should it not be  /var/www/me/web/vmfiles/   ?

[Napoleon]

No, because I can access that folder through the URL  mydomain/tmp/<file>, and I would be able to access vmfiles through mydomain/vmfiles/.

[GJC Web Design]

so /web contains the site files?

if so /var/www/me/vmfiles/ is correct and you need to sort your strange access problems.. on a typical setup this works..
otherwise follow the instructions for a folder  in the site with obscure path name