php opendir symbolic link on localhost apache

php opendir symbolic link on localhost apache

I am running a localhost server on my mac under /Users/myusername/Sites
I have a symbolic link to an external directory in my Sites folder. If I
try to run opendir and load images in the directory that is a symbolic
link I get
Warning: opendir(dir/symlinkDir/) [function.opendir]: failed to open dir:
Permission denied
symlinkDir is a symbolic link to a dir containing images. This works fine
it symlinkDir is not a soft link but instead an actual dir.
I have tried changing permissions on the directory, 755, 777, +x. I've
also tried changing the /etc/apache2/users/myusername.conf to
<Directory "/Users/myusername/Sites/">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>