.htaccess DirectoryIndex not working - apache

Question

I have a website running on Linux/UNIX but I don’t know a darn thing about the .htaccess file and the syntax used in it..
If you go to http://pr.bananapages.net the system won’t produce any results.
But if you add the file name, it comes up. ex: http://pr.bananapages.net/index.html
NOTE: The URL points to a subfolder on the shared access hosting server but it doen't really matter because when you type in www.bananapages.net/pr/hamshack, (That's where the short cut DNS address points to), It still won't produce the index.html file without actually specifying it.
I have tried everything I could find about DirectoryIndex but I can’t get it to work without using the file name… (index.html)
This is my current .htccess file.
Options -MultiViews
DirectoryIndex system.php index.php
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
DirectoryIndex system.php index.php index.html
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]
# Google sitemap controller
RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ tmp/sitemap.xml [L]
RewriteRule ^tmp/sitemap.xml$ tmp/sitemap.xml [L]
RewriteRule ^index.html$ index.html [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.xml|\.php([0-9]*)|\.tpl|\.phtml|\.ini|\.inc|/)$ system.php?_p=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ system.php?_p=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
# compresses text, html, javascript, css and xml
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript application/x-javascript
</IfModule>
NOTE: If I rename the .htaccess file, it will work without specifying the filename, (index.html) so. I am fairly certain there is something in this .htaccess file preventing this from working the desired way.

Answer 1

You can try this:
in all your
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
Double it as thus, to say to do rewrite only if lt's neither directory, nor file:
Edit
(Tested in Debian/Apache2).
Options -MultiViews
DirectoryIndex system.php index.php index.html
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]
# Google sitemap controller
RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ tmp/sitemap.xml [L]
#RewriteRule ^tmp/sitemap.xml$ tmp/sitemap.xml [L]
#RewriteRule ^index.html$ index.html [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.xml|\.php([0-9]*)|\.tpl|\.phtml|\.ini|\.inc|/)$ system.php?_p=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ system.php?_p=$1 [QSA,L]
to see if it works better? Please notice some commented infinite loop rewriterule.

Answer 2

I had a similar situation on my vps
I wanted my default homepage to be login.php so if someone where to go to http://[ip]/[folder]/ it would just load the login.php file that I set in my .htaccess within the [folder]
so i set 'DirectoryIndex login.php' in .htaccess but
it would not work instead I would get a 403 when going to http://[ip]/[folder]/ as I didn't have any index.html or index.php
so...
I decided to check the apache config file httpd.conf and under DirectoryIndex I put 'login.php' as part of the list that was already there then restarted the httpd service and
it worked for me!

Answer 3

Here's the answer...
# Rules for subfolders
# for pr.bananapages.net
RewriteRule ^pr/(.*)$ pr/$1 [L]
# for jm.bananapages.net
RewriteRule ^jm/(.*)$ jm/$1 [L]
# and so on....
RewriteRule ^dr/(.*)$ dr/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^usvi/(.*)$ usvi/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^bvi/(.*)$ bvi/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^kitts/(.*)$ kitts/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^ar/(.*)$ ar/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^tt/(.*)$ tt/$1 [L]
I don't know why that works but it does seem to work...
Dale