I don't think there's a directory "private", there's one "pvt".
<p>Do you have your "ns_param PageRoot" param set in your nsd.tcl (the AOLserver config file ?). Mine is set like this :
<pre>
set pageroot /web/${servername}/www
ns_section "ns/server/${servername}"
ns_param directoryfile $directoryfile
ns_param pageroot $pageroot
</pre>
<p>Where "servername" is the server name, assigned to this var in the top of the nsd.tcl (e.g. set servername "server1").