Server remembering old rewrite rules, even when I remove htaccess

Question

I have set up a development server with Ubuntu and LAMP, but for some reason the .htaccess is acting strange...

There is a site on there with a set of rules, when I comment them out they still work, and even when I renamed the file to .htaccesss it still works! If I delete everything in the file it still works, restarting Apache every time I make a change...

I have tried reinstalling Apache and reinstalled the rewrite module, and it still doesn't work...

Any new rules I add seem to not have any affect at all, so it is reading the rules from somewhere else it seems.

If I cause a syntax error by putting a / in the .htaccess file I do get a 500 server error.

Is there a place with cached rules? I've never had this problem before!

EDIT: I solved this problem by adding Options -Multiviews in my .htaccess file

Answer 1

It might be worth to check whether the caching happens on the client and not server-side. Firefox will cache any 301 (PERMANLTY moved)-redirecteds for a few days. Use 302 (temporary) redirect. To fix "old targets" you can set up an html page redirecting to another domain (e.g. without www) etc. to prevent firefox from using its cache.

Answer 2

Is there a place with cached rules? I've never had this problem before!

(usually) not server-side, but client / browser-side; try to cache-clean your browser as well

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EDIT 1

suggestion: move out the .htaccess - file from your docroot. when there are still rewrite-rules active, they must be somwhere: either in your docroot or in <virtualserver> - config. to disable htaccess for your docroot, add the following to your server-config:

<virtualHost>
    ...
    DocumentRoot /some/path
    ...

    <Directory /some/path>

        AllowOverride None

    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>  

• restart apache

If your are sure your dont have any RewriteRule in your Server-Config AND with teh snippet above still get rewrites, i smell fish

Answer 3

1. Open browser inspector. (CTRL + SHIFT + I).

2. Switch to network tab

3. Check the Disable Cache checkbox and refresh the site.

Answer 4

Add Options -Multiviews in the .htaccess file.

Answered by Adam but wasn't visible so here it is, it works!

Answer 5

This may not help everyone, but in my case I discovered I had an old copy of .htaccess sitting in a parent directory of my site, actually a couple of directories up from my apache htdocs folder and it seems apache traverses up the directory tree and must merge this and my .htaccess in my htdocs folder. Once I discovered this errant file and removed it the redirect that wouldn't die stopped redirecting.