Question

To enable a directory listing, we’d use this in Apache:

Options Indexes

How to list the directory content, including the default file that Apache serves when a directory is requested i.e. DirectoryIndex index.html?

Ideally, we can set this up per virtual host. My vhost file looks something like:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin [e-mail]
  DocumentRoot /some/path/
  ...
  <Directory />
    Options Indexes
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

You could set the DirectoryIndex directive to a value, that might never occur as a filename on your filesystem:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin [e-mail]
  DocumentRoot /some/path/
  ...
  <Directory />
    Options Indexes
    DirectoryIndex !
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

But once somebody adds a file named ! it will be served by apache instead of showing the directory index list. So it’s more or less an odd workaround instead of a proper solution.