Symlinking albums to other vhosts on server

I'd like to be able to use gallery to manage media files that are accessed by all my other websites. I have a dedicated server, running Plesk, RHEL3 and Apache2. Each domain is set up as a vhost.

To explain in more detail, I'd like to be able to have one album in my gallery installation that has different subfolders for my website images - all the company logos, photos, audio files.

I'd then like to be able to symlink that album directory to a directory on the website - such as www.examplesite.com/sharedimages/

But the gallery installation is at www.examplegallery.com, and say for example that my files are in a folder above the webroot: /home/httpd/vhosts/examplegallery.com/gallery

So my idea was as follows:

1. In the directory /home/httpd/vhosts/examplesite.com/httpdocs/ I ran the command ln -s /home/httpd/vhosts/examplegallery.com/gallery/albums/sharedimages sharedimages

2. I then made sure that ownerships and permissions were right as I'd had to use root to set the above up.

3. I tried to link to an image: http://www.examplesite.com/sharedimages/logo/logo.jpg and it didn't work.

4. next I created a 'vhost.conf' file in /home/httpd/vhosts/examplesite.com/conf which looked like this:

<Directory /home/httpd/vhosts/examplesite.com/httpdocs>
php_admin_value open_basedir "/home/httpd/vhosts/examplegallery.com/gallery/album/sharedimages:/"
</Directory>

5. Then I issued the command: /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -a -v

6. Finally I restarted apache

7. I tried the audio file again, and it still didn't work.

Interestingly it's an odd error message i get:

Please could anyone help me resolve this problem? My fallback plan is having to keep two filestores for a while, but I'd really rather try to find a smart soultion!

Thanks for any help
Steve

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The following information is required to get an answer:
Get this information from the PHP diagnostic (in the configuration wizard).
Gallery URL (optional but very useful):
Gallery version: last nights build!
Apache version: 2
PHP version (don't just say PHP 4, please): 4.3.2
Graphics Toolkit:
Operating system: RHEL3 as part of Plesk
Web browser/version (if applicable):