mod_rewrite should serve files that exist in document root but is ignoring them

Question

I've lifted most of this from Wordpress, so any path on the domain like say /search or /list is directed to /index.php. Fine that works.

However, it should not do that if the file being requested exists in the document root. So if I request /exists.php it should run that script. Instead it's ignoring files on the filesystem and continues to serve index.php.

<VirtualHost *:80>

  DocumentRoot /home/sites/dev
  ServerName dev.vbox

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule . /index.php

  ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/dev.error.log

</VirtualHost>

I've gone through the mod_rewrite documentation and various Google search results but I don't see anything wrong with my rewrite conditions. If the requested filename is a file or a directory, do not redirect to /index.php.

I've cd to the doc root and listed the contents of that directory, the file I'm requesting exists. My apache access log has entries for /exists.php.

The document root is a mounted directory that lives on the my Mac and the VM serving the request is Ubuntu install.

Answer 1

Try %{LA-U:REQUEST_FILENAME} instead of %{REQUEST_FILENAME}. The LA-U prefix is needed before the request is mapped to the filesystem.

Edit:

Didn't catch it in my first pass, you also need to change the first argument to RewriteRule like so:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /home/sites/dev
    ServerName dev.vbox

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{LA-U:REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{LA-U:REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule .* /index.php

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/dev.error.log
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

I ended up adding another rewrite condition, so my working Virtualhost looked like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>

  DocumentRoot /var/www/public_html
  ServerName domain.com

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^.*\.(php)$ [nocase]
  RewriteRule . /index.php

</VirtualHost>