Apache .htaccess <Directory not allowed here

Question

I run XAMPP and I'm trying to learn how .htaccess works. I have a file structure that looks something like this:

/parent
    /foo
    /bar
    .htaccess

I simply want to change all foo requests to bar with a GET parameter appended after them. For example:

foo/
foo/hello.php

turn into:

bar/?test=yes
bar/hello.php?test=yes

When I try to put the <Directory> directive in my .htaccess file:

<Directory "/foo">
    Options +Indexes
</Directory>

I get the following error log:

[Tue Sep 19 17:23:58.356362 2017] [core:alert] [pid 6336:tid 1900] [client ::1:60018] C:/xampp/htdocs/parent/.htaccess: <Directory not allowed here

I checked my httpd.conf file and everything is alright. I'm sure because if I change the contents of the .htaccess file to simply:

Options -Indexes

It correctly displays a 403 error. If I replace the - with +, it shows the directory listing.

What am I doing wrong?

Solution 1

<Directory> directive is not allowed in .htaccess and for meeting your requirements you don't even need this in .htaccess.

You can use this rule in site root (parent) .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(?:^|&)test=yes(?:&|$) [NC]
RewriteRule ^foo/(.*)$ bar/$1?test=yes [NC,QSA,L]

Solution 2

<Directory.. is not allowed in .htaccess according to the manual. You can have it only in server config and virtual host. You should use mod_rewrite instead.

Solution 3

Short answer: Just delete the .htaccess file and your error.log problem will vanish.

Longer answer:

I started getting the same message in my C:\xampp\apache\logs\error.log file earlier today. The error began suddenly (after years of using localhost without a hitch) and coincided with a "500 server error" when I tried to start localhost.

The content of the .htcaccess file (which had appeared in my /Sites directory for the first time today) was:

<Directory>
  AllowOverride All
  Order allow,deny
</Directory>

As others have noted in relation to similar .htcaccess questions, the file is not generally necessary.

I therefore simply deleted the .htcaccess file, which instantly solved the problem. Immediately localhost started working again, and the error vanished from the logs!

Comments

[dodov]

Can you show an example? How would I implement that to solve my problem? The manual gives examples with <Directory>. Maybe show an example solution to the problem in my question?

[dodov]

I understand what the RewriteRule does and what the pattern in it matches, but can you explain what RewriteCond does? I can't understand what it checks.

[anubhava]

RewriteCond uses a negation operator ! at the start which means execute this rule only when QUERY_STRING doesn't already have test=yes query parameter. query parameter might be at the start, middle or in end. That is why I have (?:^|&) for start/middle and (?:&|$) for middle/end positions.