I want to make apache to always open up a signle page for 404 errors from all subdomains.
The problem is that my subdomains are located in subfolders in public_html, and thus have a different root path.
For example the main domain this works quite well:
ErrorDocument 404 /Error/404.html
The Error folder and the main domain are located in public_html respectively.
However for the forum subdomain, located in public_html/forum/ the above root path does not, and it actually looks for public_html/forum/Error/404.html which doesn't exist.
I tried to rewrite rule for the forum folder, but it didn't work out either:
ErrorDocument 404 /../Error/404.html
Seems, it cannot go below the root folder for some reason.
Any ideas how can I refer to the same page from the main and the subdomain alike, without triggering redirects? (eg: http://mysite/Error/404.html would accomplish this, but would also change the url address of the page which I don't want)
Seems, it cannot go below the root folder for some reason.
Because being able to traverse above the document root is a very, very serious security risk. If your webserver gets compromised, people would be able to serve all kinds of files anywhere on your entire server.
If you have access to server config you can setup aliases for the /Error folder. For example, in your forum subdomain's vhost config, you can add:
Alias /Error /path/to/public_html/Error/
This way, when you go to http://forum.yourdomain.com/Error/404.html you'd actually be looking at http://main.yourdomain.com/Error/404.html. Then you can just use:
ErrorDocument 404 /Error/404.html
like normal in your forum subdomain.
But if you don't have access to your server/vhost config, you'll need to use mod_proxy and mod_rewrite. So in the htaccess file in public_html/forum/, add these to the top:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^Error/(.*)$ http://main.yourdomain.com/Error/$1 [L,P]
Related
I would like to move an entire directory and its subdirectories from one Apache server A to another Apache server B, and then create a redirection from A to B.
i.e.
http://server_a.com/docroot/dir to http://server_b.com/docroot/dir.
This is what I did:
I copied the files and directory structure under dir from A to B
I deleted the directory dir on A
I created a rule in docroot/.htaccess on server A that reads
Redirect permanent dir/ http://server_b.com/docroot/dir/
But when I go to http://server_a.com/docroot/dir/path/to/file/index.html, I get a 403 Forbidden, even if the target page http://server_b.com/docroot/dir/path/to/file/index.html is up.
I know that the .htaccess is read by Apache, because it correctly controls other parts of server_a. I am not root on these servers. I have also tried with a RewriteRule, with the exact same results.
How should I go about creating a redirect in this case? Thanks.
If you have mod_rewrite enabled than you can do this
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?docroot/dir(/.*)?$ http://server_b.com/docroot/dir$1 [R=301,L]
Put it in your .htaccess file in the Document Root directory http://server_a.com/.
Note:
Delete you Browser cache first.
You'll need the leading / in the old URL. Like this:
Redirect permanent "/dir" "http://server_b.com/docroot/dir/"
See the mod_alias docs for more details.
Suppose, a user (of a website), types a random, not-existing sub-domain name:
random.example.com
Is it possible to redirct them to the [main] domain:
example.com
The issue is that, if users type [or misspell] a sub-domain name - then currently, it goes to a [404] error page. Yet, I have already placed:
ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com
In the .htaccess - but, it does not redirect. Is it possible to create some kind of rewrite conditions/rules for a wildcard, such as all sub-domains that do not exist?
It seems that the sub-domains's vhost's document root are pointing to somewhere else, so probably you cannot do this.
On the other hand in the main apache config, you could use the ServerAlias directive to catch more domains with regular expressions or if you can control the default virtual host (the first usually), you can use rewrite rules as well.
I have a domain which contains within it multiple sites with multiple .htaccess files (it's for clients to check their own projects out before they go live to their own servers, so each .htaccess file controls its own site).
If I have a .htaccess file in the root, it will control the domain. If mydomain.com/doesntexist is entered and it doesn't exist, the root's 404 page will come up. If mydomain.com/doesexist/doesntexist is entered, the .htaccess file in the "doesexist" directory would take priority, as opposed to the root's .htaccess file ... correct?
You are correct.
I suggest you to read Apache HTTP Server Tutorial: .htaccess files
The configuration directives found in a .htaccess file are applied to
the directory in which the .htaccess file is found, and to all
subdirectories thereof. However, it is important to also remember that
there may have been .htaccess files in directories higher up.
Directives are applied in the order that they are found. Therefore, a
.htaccess file in a particular directory may override directives found
in .htaccess files found higher up in the directory tree. And those,
in turn, may have overridden directives found yet higher up, or in the
main server configuration file itself.
ROOT htaccess
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
subfolder htaccess
ErrorDocument 404 /subfolder/index.php
http://domain.com/does_not_exist --> (404 error) /index.php
http://domain.com/subfolder/does_not_exist --> (404 error) /subfolder/index.php
Ok, so this problem recently arose and I don't know why it is happening; it's actually two problems in one...
0. My .htaccess file, for reference. (EDITED)
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
ErrorDocument 400 /index.php?400
ErrorDocument 401 /index.php?401
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php?403
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?404
ErrorDocument 410 /index.php?410
ErrorDocument 414 /index.php?414
ErrorDocument 500 /global/500.php
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://(.*\.)?(animuson)\.(biz|com|info|me|net|org|us|ws)/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [F]
1. My 'pictures' folder is following the hard path instead of the redirect.
I have no idea WHY it is doing this. It's really bugging me. The 'pictures' folder is a symbolic link to another place so that I can easily upload files to that folder without having to search through folders and such via my FTP account, but that's the only thing I use it for. However, when I visit http://example.com/pictures my htaccess sees it as accessing that other folder, which is restricted, and throws a 403 error rather than redirecting to index.php and displaying the page like normal.
I figured it has something to do with that specific folder being a symbolic link causing it to act oddly, but I have determined that my rules are not being applied to folders at all. If I visit folders such as 'css' and 'com' which are folders in the web root, it displays a 404 error page and adds the '/' to the end of the URL because it's treating it as a directory. It also does the same 403 error for my 'images' directory which is set up in the same fashion.
So, the question here is how do I modify my RewriteRule to apply to the directories as well? I want everything accessed via the web to be redirected back to index.php while maintaining the full access path in the address bar, why is it not working? (I'm pretty sure it was working fine before.)
Here's a small chart to show the paths they're following...
example.com/pictures -> pictures/ -> /home/animuson/animuson-pictures -> 403
example.com/com -> com/ -> 404
example.com/test -> index.php
example.com/ -> index.php
example.com/images -> images/ -> /home/animuson/animuson-images -> 403
example.com/css -> css/ -> 404
EDIT: Following information added.
Apache is processing the structure of the directory first. It's determining if the path exists based on what was typed into the address bar. If someone types in a folder name that happens to exist, it will redirect the user to the path with the "/" at the end of the URL signifying that it's a directory. For the 'pictures' directory explained above, the user does not have permission to access that folder so it is redirecting them to a 403 Access Denied page rather than simply showing the page that is supposed to be displayed there via the RewriteRule above. My biggest question is why is Apache processing the directory first and how do I make it stop doing that? I would really love an answer to this question.
2. Why is my compression not working? (EDIT: This part is fixed.)
When analyzing my site through a web optimizer, it keeps saying my page isn't using web compression, but I'm almost 100% positive that it was working fine before under the same settings. Can anyone suggest any reasons why it might not be working with this set up or suggest a better way of doing it?
Where is this .htaccess file situated? At the root or in the pictures directory?
1) You're using Options -Indexes which will deny access to directory listings. This is handled by /index.php?403 which in turn will redirect to /403. (I confirmed this by manually going to /index.php?403) I don't see any other rules in the posted .htaccess that are supposed to affect this. So this either happens because either index.php or some other .htaccess file or server rule makes that redirect.
You might also want to check the UNIX file permissions of the directory in question.
2) According to this aptimizer, http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/, compression is indeed enabled for html, js and css files, as specified in the rules. My bet is that the optimizer is being stupid and does one of these three things:
1)) Complaining about images not being compressed. (It's generally a bad idea to compress images because they're typically already compressed and the extra CPU load typically isn't worth it since the net gain is so small. So your rules are OK in this regard.)
2)) It might think that DEFLATE doesn't count as compression, and wants you to use GZip.
3)) It might also react to the externally included StatCounter js file, which is not compressed. (And there's not much you can do about that.)
After a while of deliberating on Apache's IRC channel, I was finally able to figure out the real reasoning behind this on a fluke. I just happened to be looking at the directory structure using ls -l and noticed that all of the symbolic links had somehow has their permissions changed to animuson:animuson from the root:root original. I tried to run a simple chown root:root on them and it had no effect, so I deleted them all and recreated them and the problem has gone away. I don't really have any idea why the permissions made any different in this scenario but the solution worked and everything is okay now. I've also added a DirectorySlash Off to my .htaccess file to get rid of the slashes after folders that exist, just to make it look all that much nicer.
I want to map a number of directories in a URL:
www.example.com/manual
www.example.com/login
to directories outside the web root.
My web root is
/www/htdocs/customername/site
the manual I want to redirect to is in
/www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
In mod_alias, this would be equal to
Alias /manual /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
but as I have access only to .htaccess, I can't use Alias, so I have to use mod_rewrite.
What I have got right now after this question is the following:
RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /www/htdocs/customername/manual/$2 [L]
this works in the sense that requests are recognized and redirected properly, but I get a 404 that looks like this (note the absolute path):
The requested URL /www/htdocs/customername/manual/resourcename.htm
was not found on this server.
However, I have checked with PHP: echo file_exists(...) and that file definitely exists.
why would this be? According to the mod_rewrite docs, this is possible, even in a .htaccess file. I understand that when doing mod_rewrite in .htaccess, there will be an automated prefix, but not to absolute paths, will it?
It shouldn't be a rights problem either: It's not in the web root, but within the FTP tree to which only one user, the main FTP account, has access.
I can change the web root in the control panel anytime, but I want this to work the way I described.
This is shared hosting, so I have no access to the error logs.
I just checked, this is not a wrongful 301 redirection, just an internal rewrite.
In .htaccess, you cannot rewrite to files outside the wwwroot.
You need to have a symbolic link within the webroot that points to the location of the manual.
Then in your .htaccess you need the line:
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
or maybe a little more blindly
Options +FollowSymlinks
Then you can
RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /www/htdocs/customername/site/manual/$2 [L]
where manual under site is a link to /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
You create the symlink on the command line with:
ln -s /www/htdocs/customername/site/manual /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
But I imagine you're on shared hosting without shell access, so look into creating symbolic links within CPanel,Webmin, or whatever your admin interface is. There are php/cgi scripts that do it as well. Of course, you're still limited to the permissions that the host has given you. If they don't allow you to follow symlinks as a policy, you cannot override that within your .htaccess.
AFAIK mod_rewrite works at the 'protocol' level (meaning on the wire HTTP). So I suspect you are getting HTTP 302 with your directory path in the location.
So I'm afraid you might be stuck unless.. your hosting lets you follow symbolic links; so you can link to that location (assuming you have shell access or this is possible using FTP or your control panel) under your current document root.
Edit: It actually mentions URL-file phase hook in the docs so now I suspect the directory directives aren't allowing enough permissions.
This tells you what you need to know.
The requested URL /www/htdocs/customername/manual/resourcename.htm
was not found on this server.
It interprets RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /www/htdocs/customername/manual/$2 [L] to mean rewrite example.com/manual/ as if it were example.com/www/htdocs/customername/manual/.
Try
RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /customername/manual/$2 [L]
instead.