Infinite redirect loop?

Question

I want dev.test.com, to go to a specific directory, /var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot. Here's my apache2 conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName dev.test.com
        Redirect permanent / /var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot
</VirtualHost>

I keep getting successive 301 Moved permanently responses (until the server stops sending them, or is it the browser stops requesting them?)

GET dev.test.com: http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot
GET webroot: http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webroot
GET webroot: http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webroot
[...] 21 requests later (seriously):
GET webroot: http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webrootvar/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/

I found these responses via firebug. Anyone know what the problem could be? Thanks.

Answer 1

Instead of a Redirect, isn't what you need a DocumentRoot?

What you're doing here is sending a redirect back to the client. Therefore, what's happening is that Apache's prepending the name of the current VHost onto the redirect target string, and sending:

Location: http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot

Of course, when that hits, it finds the dev.test.com VHost, and lo and behold! there's a Redirect in there that applies to this request. So it happily sends you to http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/(yourrequeststring), which works out to:

Location: http://dev.test.com/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot/var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot

Make sense now? At any rate, what you need is:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName dev.test.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot
    <Directory /var/www/cakephp/dev/webroot>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        Deny from none
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

The section is optional; add it only if you get 403's when you try to use the site with the new DocumentRoot directive in place.