SitePoint Forums - Server Configuration, Apache & URL Rewriting

IfModule checks in htaccess - performance impact?

Force Flow — Sat, 25 May 2013 22:25:33 GMT

Do IfModule checks in your htaccess file actually result in a performance hit?

It doesn't seem to make a difference on the servers I maintain (granted, they don't get a very high amount of traffic), and I haven't run any heavy analysis other than browser load times.

I've seen folks who say that it does result in a significant performance hit, and also folks that say there's no hit, and still others that say it's so miniscule that it doesn't really matter. However, I haven't seen any solid data to back this up to show which school of though is actually correct.

Has anyone seen any solid data/testing on the subject?

Major Issues Uploading Files

scottlpool2003 — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:59:09 GMT

I've been stuck on a file upload issue for nearly a week and I'm no closer to resolving the problem.

Basically, I am working on a file upload script and the issue is relating to the upload of files. Specifically it tends to be with files 10MB+

I thought this issue would be resolved promptly as it seems obvious that it is the INI file rejecting files over 10MB. This isn't the case though as occasionally a 15MB test PDF file gets through and uploads correctly.

So what have I done to try and resolve the issue?

1. I went through the config file and made sure that I had the correct attributes set which are:

Quote:

max_execution_time 300
max_file_uploads 20
max_input_time 600
memory_limit 128M
post_max_size 70M
upload_max_filesize 50M
upload_tmp_dir C:\Windows\Temp\

2. This had no effect, so knowing it's a 500 internal server error, I checked the error log. There was nothing in the PHP error log, so in the INI file, I added a custom error log and still no PHP error. After more searching, I discovered another log in ISS W3SVC26 and this is what it contains relating to what I believe is the upload:

Quote:

#Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.5
#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2013-05-09 12:29:21
#Fields: date time s-sitename s-computername s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs-version cs(User-Agent) cs(Cookie) cs(Referer) cs-host sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status sc-bytes cs-bytes time-taken

2013-05-23 13:32:17 W3SVC12 DSVR017177 213.171.205.235 POST /account/test/server/php/ file=GibLive2611.pdf&_method=DELETE 80 - 88.202.236.161 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64)+AppleWebKit/537.31+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/26.0.1410.64+Safari/537.31 PHPSESSID=d828b568c8c122e45b4b376ff1287a74;+__atuvc=0%7C13%2C0%7C14%2C0%7C15%2C0%7C16%2C18%7C17;+__utma=11234787.1386610922.1366208206.1369298491.1369306266.65;+__utmc=11234787;+__utmz=11234787.1366208206.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none) http://www.free2read.co.uk/account/test/ www.free2read.co.uk 200 0 0 622 786 264
2013-05-23 13:32:17 W3SVC12 DSVR017177 213.171.205.235 POST /account/test/server/php/ file=GibLive2611%20%281%29.pdf&_method=DELETE 80 - 88.202.236.161 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64)+AppleWebKit/537.31+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/26.0.1410.64+Safari/537.31 PHPSESSID=d828b568c8c122e45b4b376ff1287a74;+__atuvc=0%7C13%2C0%7C14%2C0%7C15%2C0%7C16%2C18%7C17;+__utma=11234787.1386610922.1366208206.1369298491.1369306266.65;+__utmc=11234787;+__utmz=11234787.1366208206.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none) http://www.free2read.co.uk/account/test/ www.free2read.co.uk 200 0 0 622 796 244

There are many instances of the above, each time I try and upload a file. I have no idea where to start with the above, I couldn't find out much from browsing other than they could be system error codes?

3. Switched from PHP5 to PHP5.3 with no success, also changed PHP INI file on 5.3 to no avail.

4. Switched from PHP5.3 to PHP5.4 changed the INI file, no success.

5. Tried the upload script by logging into remote server, navigating to the page and it worked perfectly!

6. Tried the script on various different clients, same result didn't work.

7. Tried a few different scripts same result.

The actual PDF file seems to go into the TEMP directory and the script hits 100% before throwing out the 500 error.

Please help! I feel like I'm going crazy, been stuck on this since last Friday, if I see another 500 Internal Server Error, I think I'll go crazy.

Thanks

Backup Software Issue using HyperV

sahostking — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:41:16 GMT

Hi guys,

I've tried the following:

Microsoft DPM
http://hypervbackup.codeplex.com/

Both seem to take my Linux VMs offline on a HyperV Box. We used Rsync before and we are considering going back to that for the Linux VMs.

I'd like to know if there is any backup software that works well with HyperV Linux VMs and does not take them offline or pause them when doing a backup? Also must not be too pricey :)

Determining if all requests will read both .htaccess files

nvee — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:59:24 GMT

My application has the following structure:

.../public_html/ (application root)
.../public_html/www_root/ (my webroot folder containing all images, css, js etc along with my front controller index.php)

I have an .htaccess file in both of these folders. My first .htaccess file is a lot more comprehensive regarding rules etc but essentially will forward all requests to my www_root/ folder:

Code:





    # Follow all symbolic links but do not index directories

    Options +FollowSymlinks -Indexes



    # Turn the rewrite engine on

    RewriteEngine On



    # Turn the server signature off

    ServerSignature Off



    # Protect against DOS attacks by limiting file upload size

    LimitRequestBody 10240000



    # Do not allow access to any .ht file

    

        Order allow,deny

        Deny from all

        Satisfy All

    



    # Protect the php.ini file:

    

        order allow,deny

        deny from all

    



    # Ensure all URL's is processed using the www. (SEO, Not for development purposes)

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^localhost [NC] [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^testdomain.com [NC]

    RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]



    #dont send the apache error document, but rather send the not found to index.php

    ErrorDocument 404 index.php



    # Send a forbidden request to some known web spiders

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Anarchie [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ASPSeek [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^attach [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^autoemailspider [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xenu [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus

    RewriteRule ^.* - [F,L]

   

    # Rewrite all empty requests to www_root/

    RewriteRule    ^$ www_root/    [L]



    # Rewrite all requests except selected filenames to www_root

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*\.(gif|jpg|png|ico|css|js|swf|wav|mp3|less|cur)$

    RewriteRule    (.*) www_root/$1 [L]







    

        # When mod_rewrite is not available, we instruct a temporary redirect of

        # the startpage to the front controller explicitly so that the website

        # and the generated links can still be used.

        RedirectMatch 302 ^/$ /index.php/

        # RedirectTemp cannot be used instead

My .htaccess file in my www_root/ folder sends all requests to the index.php file:

Code:



    RewriteEngine On

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]





    

        # When mod_rewrite is not available, we instruct a temporary redirect of

        # the startpage to the front controller explicitly so that the website

        # and the generated links can still be used.

        RedirectMatch 302 ^/$ /index.php/

        # RedirectTemp cannot be used instead

Now as my front controller resides in the www_root/ folder (.../public_html/www_root/index.php) it essentially is now the base path of all html requests, so when I have something like , will that request process both my .htaccess files or will it only process the .htaccess file located in my www_root/ folder? The reason being is that I do not want to duplicate all rules in both .htaccess files, but fear that not doing that may cause all "html" requests to not read or be filtered with the rules in my application root folder?

Also, not knowing better, is there a better or more efficient way to achieve the above? I have collected these rules over years so I am not sure if some of them are overkill :)

Mod Rewrite breaks CSS

GHicks — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:24:44 GMT

I just added a mod rewrite to eliminate the index.php from my URL. After doing so, my page loads except for the CSS. I can't even directly access the CSS directory (http://mysite.com/css/style.css). Without the rules in .htaccess if I went to that link I would see the plain text of my CSS file in the browser. With the rules I have listed below in .htaccess I can't access the css file (get a 404 error).

I have read all kinds of solutions saying to use absolute paths, but that won't work (as far as I can tell ) in my instance as the directory returns a 404, it is not an issue of not directing to the proper directory.

Here are the contents of my .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

This is my first mod rewrite and I am still getting my head around what all this means. Hopefully someone has a solution as I would prefer to NOT advertise that I am using php to minimize hack attempts (how ever minutely it will minimize it is still something).

Greg

VPS and Memory Usage

cpradio — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:56:50 GMT

Okay, so I run two very small sites on a VPS (both are Wordpress using W3 Total Cache) running Apache. I've seen a prior thread very similar to what is happening with my server, but I want to approach the topic differently.

First of all, I want to try and identify the culprit causing the memory usage, but before I get into that, here are a few key details:
2 GHz CPU with 300 MB of RAM
It has 2 wordpress sites, the first had 1224 entries in the access.log for today and the second had a dismal 406 entries (let's face it both are dismal).
The entries for the first wordpress site are primarily trying to hack its way in by guessing an account to automatically login to wp-login.php, the latter site all seem to be legitimate requests for access.

Lastly, the requests are for example.net which is a mirror domain for mydomain.com. example.net doesn't really server any web presence purpose, so I could probably block all requests to that domain and that would kill all of the wp-login.php attacks (example.net is primarily kept for e-mail purposes).

Okay, so what that out of the way, I'm trying to figure out how to identify what is causing the spike in memory usage. Supposedly it spiked at 1:00 AM PST, so they automatically bumped the memory limit by 25% to handle the excess load. They are telling me to throw more RAM on it, but that is the dumbest thing I've heard of. To quote my reply: "That's like stating to throw more wood on a fire because the flame is too high. Sure it will lower the flame for a while, but once it catches up, its not much more fiercer than it was prior."

I really need to identify the cause for the spike. Considering my fire analogy, the reason for the increase flame could be an accelerant (think pine cone, lint, paper, etc) or a pocket of air that became available, feeding the flame. You have to analyze the fire to figure out which it is (sometimes waiting till the fire has died to see remnants of the cause).

So what tools/processes do you use to identify high memory usage on your web servers?

Instal apache in Ubuntu 12.04

tompat — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:28:28 GMT

In Kevin Yanks book PHP & MySQL Novice to Ninja he has step by step instructions for loading Apache. I have followed them and when I get to the compile part it says No APR. I went to apache http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/install.html and read the compiling & installing page.

"APR and APR-UtilMake sure you have APR and APR-Util already installed on your system. If you don't, or prefer to not use the system-provided versions, download the latest versions of both APR and APR-Util from Apache APR, unpack them into ./srclib/apr and ./srclib/apr-util (be sure the domain names do not have version numbers; for example, the APR distribution must be under ./srclib/apr/) and use ./configure's --with-included-apr option. On some platforms, you may have to install the corresponding -dev packages to allow httpd to build against your installed copy of APR and APR-Util."

I am assuming I have to have those installed first then apache2, and what is the easiest way? I have the tar.gz's but cant seem to get them installed.

Any help would be appreciated.

URL Rewrite rules

DigitalEditor — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:25:40 GMT

I have never written htaccess rewrite rules before.

I need this url

http://mysite.com/view_retailer.php?rid=770

rewritten to

http://mysite.com/retailer/{What ever is the title in the rid770 database}

and this url

http://mysite.com/retailers.php?cat=39

to

http://mysite.com/{the category title that is in the database cat=39}

Thanks

My new rewrite breaks my forum login?

PicnicTutorials — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:41:19 GMT

I would post this in the original thread http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...es-code-please - which would help future users much more - but someone closed it. Here is the code Jeff gave me. Works perfect except it prevents me from loging into my forum backend for some reason. Took me 15 hours to figure that out. OMG. I tried to give a exclusion to the forum folder but I must not of been doing it right because I couldnt get it to work.

So two questions? Why would this break my forum login? And two, can I make it exclude the forum located at www.site.com/forum/? Doing so I would assume all would function correctly again. FYI using my old and much larger rewrite the login works. Thanks.

Code:

# Rewrite index.html/php to folder

RewriteRule ^(.*/)?index\.(html?|php)$ /$1 [R=301,L]



# Rewrite non-www (non-canonical) to www

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

server module to block email spam?

patrick0001 — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:25:59 GMT

We own a dedicate server (Apache) and provide share hosting to 50 client. Each time when one of the client PC attack by virus, the particular PC will automatically send out spam email and causing the mail server IP block by ISP.

How can we avoid this problem? Any server module to monitor spam, e.g. auto block number of email send out in short duration, or delay email send out for the particular client.

quick simple question about rewrite

PicnicTutorials — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:01:20 GMT

Code:

# Rewrite index.html to folder

RewriteRule ^(.*/)?index\.html?$ /$1 [R=301,L]



# Rewrite non-www (non-canonical) to www

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

In the above code the question mark after the html says it can read htm too correct? What about the dollar sign? And if I wanted to make it universal for php ext too how would it look? I could fudge it but I don't know if the $ sign needs to stay for both and etc. Thanks!

So should it look exactly like this...

Code:

?index\.(html?|php)$

Park domain routing

Crimsonfox — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:37:16 GMT

Hi All,

I have a htaccess issue on an apache server that I'm a bit stuck on.

I have 2 domains, one parked on the other

olddomain.com.au

and

newdomain.com.au

I want the new domain to go directly to olddomain.com.au/?page_id=122 on request of newdomain.com.au and for the url to be newdomain.com.au

I can accomplish this, but then any other /?page_id=* also direct to /?page_id=122

I only have 5 other pages I'd like to use, so I'm looking for some way to make exceptions for them.

So ideally, this is what we want to happen.

If request newdomain.com.au/ go to newdomain.com.au/?page_id=122

But if the request newdomain.com.au/?page_id=132 this will not redirect to /?page_id=122

Hope that makes sense, any help would be greatful.

Thanks.

RewriteRule not working

sugamaer — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:23:50 GMT

Hello there!

I am having a problem with rewriterule,
None of this works, and I know the file htaccess works etc.. Can anyone help, I changed \ to / etc..
My htaccess

Quote:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^cover-([0-9]+)/.html$ view.php?cover=$1
RewriteRule ^sendcover-([0-9]+)/.html$ send_cover.php?cover=$1
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ index.php
RewriteRule ^page-([0-9]+)/.html$ page.php?pid=$1
RewriteRule ^success\.html$ index.php?er=success
RewriteRule ^unknown-error/.html$ index.php?er=un_error
RewriteRule ^width/.html$ index.php?er=width
RewriteRule ^height/.html$ index.php?er=height

Protect multiple pages using .htaccess (different usernames / passwords)

Zaggs — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:02:28 GMT

Hi Guys

Is it possible to password protect multiple pages using htaccess and a different username / password for each page?

How to point website using PUblic IP address

jemz — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:01:15 GMT

Hi,can i ask some help to all sitepoint,...I have installed wampserver2 in my computer,is it possible to call my website using public IP address in URL ?...or is this possible to type in the url like this. http://:80/test_site....and then it will load now my test_site,..if this possible can you please help me what are the configuration needed in order achieve this...

Thank you. :)