[pmwiki-users] lots of problems when redirecting or rewriting URLs

[DaveG]

I tried the Alias approach. I put the line in pretty much every location 
on my .htaccess with 500 errors each time.

I checked in /var/log, but there is no apache or apache2 directory. I 
tried writing the rewrite log to the /var/log directory, but I presume 
there is a privs issue as the log file was never created.

So, now I'm back to rewrite. I just have the last step to make.
From: http://xxx/~nepherim/pmwiki/Main/Homepage
To:   http://xxx/~nepherim/Main/Homepage

So near, yet seemingly so far :)

  ~ ~ Dave

Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Daniel Friedmann schrieb:
>> Hello
>>
>> I'm trying to shorten the URLs:
>>
>> from
>> http://spampal.de/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
>>
>> to
>> http://spampal.de/pmwiki/Main/HomePage
>>
>> or even better to
>> http://spampal.de/Main/HomePage
>>
>> How can I achieve this when my PmWiki is located in
>> /var/www/spampal.de/htdocs/pmwiki?
>>
>> First of all, I only have very basic knowledge of Linux but have a
>> dedicated Debian server for free (donated to the SpamPal project) so I
>> can't ask my provider to help me for all the little Linux things I might
>> need.
>>
>> I read http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Christian/RedirectURI and tried all
>> three ideas with my paths but nothing worked.
>>
>> I also have access to the Apache httpd.conf but adding a line like
>> 	Alias /pmwiki/ /var/www/spampal.de/htdocs/pmwiki
>> or
>> 	Alias /wiki "/var/www/spampal.de/htdocs/pmwiki/pmwiki.php"
>> didn't work as well.
> 
> The syntax is
>    Alias desired-url-prefix filepath-prefix
> 
> One thing that *might* work is
>    Alias / /var/www/spampal.de/pmwiki.php
> or
>    Alias / /var/www/spampal.de/pmwiki.php/
> This should result in Apache turning
>    http://spampal.de/Main/Page
> into
>    /var/www/spampal.de/pmwiki.php/Main/Page
> 
> You can check that by looking into these files:
>    /var/log/apache2/access_log
>    /var/log/apache2/error_log
> To keep a continuous eye on the logs, log in using SSH or (if you have 
> it) the serial console and do
>    tail -f /var/log/apache2/access_log /var/log/apache2/error_log
> so you can see what's the actual result.
> 
> The above Alias incantation should work if Apache does things in this way:
> * URL-to-filename mapping
> * Split off the end of the path until a filesystem object is found
> * Find the type of the filesystem object, determine appropriate Action
>    ("serve" for .html, "execute" for PHP, etc.)
> * Put the split-off parts into the PATH_INFO environment variable
> * Execute the action
> If this works, you don't even need CleanUrls :-)
> (CleanUrls is geared towards people who can't use Alias because they are 
> restricted to changing the .htaccess file - Alias is disallowed in 
> .htaccess.)
> 
> Hope that gets you started. Feel free to come back if Alias doesn't 
> work; in that case, we'll try CleanUrls anyway.
> 
>> What makes the ideas on http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/CleanUrls
>> very complicated are the comments in between. There are several comments
>> for shorter and/or better alternatives but also some comments with
>> drawbacks for them.
>>
>> I don't quite know what is the best working solution which is
>> recommended.
> 
> The problem is that the best working solution depends on the way the 
> machine is set up. It's a big, big mess, and not going to be prettier 
> over time.
> (Lighttpd might be an alternative; I've been seeing more and more 
> mentions in Google. I don't think an options for newbies struggling with 
> Debian at this time though: I'd expect Software like Webmin and 
> phpMyAdmin to interoperate better with Apache, Apache problems 
> nonwithstanding.)
> 
>  > This is very frustrating because I really tried dozens of
>> very similar and completely different solutions but haven't succeed so far.
> 
> That's normal. Looking in the error log isn't a very prominent advice, 
> so most newbies just see 404 or 500 errors and get no clue about what 
> exactly went wrong or where to look. (I've had the same experience 
> initially.)
> 
> I seriously recommend reading http://httpd.apache.org , particularly the 
> sections that deal with URL-to-filesystem mapping (DocumentRoot, Alias), 
> redirection (Redirect and relatives), rewriting (RewriteRule, 
> RewriteBase, RewriteLog), and .htaccess handling (AllowOverride).
> 
> Hope this all helps :-)
> 
> Regards,
> Jo
> 
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