Apache 2.2 <Location> errors: attempt to serve directory, no rewrites

Question

Setup: Apache 2.2 (Windows, win32).

httpd.conf snippets:

Alias /custom /var/www/custom

DirectoryIndex index.html

<Location /custom>
    SetHandler custom_handler
    DirectoryIndex index.html
</Location>

<Directory /var/www>
    Allow From all
    Options +Indexes
    AllowOverride all
    DirectoryIndex index.html
</Directory>

Also:

• mod_dir, mod_rewrite activated
• index.html present in /var/www/custom
• server process UID may read all files/directories in /var/www
• Apache service listens at all interfaces
• custom handler processes certain URLs within Location path, other are served from file system; index.html is processed as if no handler is present

Problems:

• rewriting URLs starting with the Location path are not working (no errors reported)
• when trying to serve http://server/custom (without closing slash), the following happens:
  • Apache redirects to http://ServerName/custom/ (to ServerName directive value)
  • "Attempt to serve directory" is written to error log for /var/www/custom/
  • 404 error is returned

How the above can be handled? The following is requried:

• serve /var/www/custom/index.html when http://server/custom is entered, or

• rewrite certain URLs, like

  RewriteRule ^custom/$ /custom/index.html [L,R]

The above rewrite rule doesn't work, wherever it's placed (in or outside Location)

Answer 1

You're mixing several different ways of mapping an URI to a part of the file system, and they don't all work together.

Firstly, if your DocumentRoot is /var/www, then the AliasMap is completely unnecessary. This isn't clear from your snippet, though.

Second, since /var/www/custom is a directory, you should use the Directory directive when you refer to it. Location is used for things that aren't directories but that you would like to act as if they were.

To clear these points, try changing your config like this:

Alias /custom /var/www/custom  # ONLY if you don't have /var/www as DocumentRoot!

DirectoryIndex index.html

<Directory /var/www>
    Allow From all
    Options +Indexes
    AllowOverride all
</Directory>

<Directory /var/www/custom>
    SetHandler custom_handler
</Directory>