mod_rewrite: max redirects reached! Why?

[telos]

Ok, I set everything to get mod_rewrite working but I think I have the actual code wrong. Everything else should be configured correctly. I get this error: Internal Server Error and my log file says that max redirects have been reached.

Here is what I have:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.])+\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)? /%1/$1 [L]

Here I what I want to do:

www.example.com --> example.com
johndoe.example.com --> example.com/user/profiles/johndoe
JOHNDOE.example.com --> example.com/user/profiles/johndoe (case-insensitive)
johndoe.example.com/?test=test --> example.com/user/profiles/johndoe/?test=test

Obviously, my code is wrong, but I can't figure out why, or how to fix it...
It needs to be case-insensitive and always show the subdomain and never the actual physical location. (johndoe.example.com, points to example.com/user/profiles/johndoe, but shows johndoe.example.com)

Does that make sense? You would think that with all the mod_rewrite questions and answers in here, people would be able to just look at someone elses question and figure it out...but for some reason, I cant.

Thanks in advance...

[dklynn]

telos,

Your problem is typical of the dreaded EVERYTHING atom (.*) and you should consider yourself lucky to be on an Apache 2 server 'cause your loop would have cause a lock-up of earlier servers.

For the subdirectory files, may I suggest that you use a <base href=...> tag to tell Apache where it is in relationship to the icons - OR use absolute links for those images.

Regards,

DK