Help with cake php (htaccess nightmare)

Server Config
1

I have taken over a site created with cake php and I haven’t a clue about cake php - there appears to be htaccess files everywhere! I need to keep the site ticking over while I get up to speed with cake php and one thing I need to do is install a webstats app.

My hosting account has a one click install for both webalizer and awstats and I have tried both

http://www.mysite.com/webalizer
http://www.mysite.com/awstats

Problem is I get the following error for both



The page isn't redirecting properly         

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

    *   This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
          cookies.

I googled this and found the following solution which didn’t work - same error as before.

modify the .htaccess file in app/webroot.



<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond &#37;{REQUEST_URI} ^/awstats/(.*)$
    RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
</IfModule>
# Begin CakePHP
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

I would really appreciate any advice on how to get one of these stats to work.

Thanks

Paul

2

You’ll need to add those lines to all of the .htaccess files that CakePHP uses. Try adding them in /.htaccess, /app/.htaccess, /app/webroot/.htaccess.

Also, the Rewrite Base statement is only needed for some hosts such as GoDaddy who actually serve your pages from a user directory (http://example.com/~username/cakephp/).

3

Thank you so much ditch182 - I did as you suggested and it now works - phew!

I noticed that the htaccess file in the root already had something similar for the forum



<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine  on
 RewriteCond &#37;{REQUEST_URI} !^/awstats/
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/forum/
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/forums/
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/phpMyAdmin/
  RewriteRule ^$       app/webroot/     [L]
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/awstats/
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/forum/
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/forums/
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/phpMyAdmin/
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ app/webroot/$1  [L]
  
  
</IfModule>

It is like japanese to me all this htaccess code:)

4

I know what you mean. I’ve been there myself.

5

I’ve been looking for this exact solution off and on for some time now and I had added the above rules to the .htaccess file in the root of the CakePHP site and was still getting errors.

I have now added these rules to the .htaccess files in /app and /app/webroot and it still wont let me login to awstats. Instead I get redirected to Cake’s error 401.

Funny thing is even with just those rules in the .htaccess and root if I turn debug to 1 in /app/config/core.php I can login fine and can then turn debug back to 0 and use awstats fine for that login session, but that’s obviously not a workable solution for the client :frowning:

Any ideas? I’m using Cake 1.2.5

6

I have seen reports of some users having to modify the root .htaccess file instead of the one in app/webroot. Try modifying /.htaccess with the same code and see what happens.

7

Sorry, meant to say in yesterday’s post that I had added it to all 3, not sure why I only mentioned two :?

8

So, the reason you’re seeing the 401 error is that Cake checks for the existence of a file before invoking the redirection.
However, that shouldn’t be happening if the root .htaccess is written properly.

A couple of things to try:
Check your modifications and make sure that all of the folder names are correct. For instance, my sites have awstats located in the directory “www.example.com/stats” while some may have them in “www.example.com/awstats”.

Remove the following statement:
RewriteBase /

Try this at the beginning of /.htaccess
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/awstats/
RewriteRule ^$ path/to/awstats [L]

Finally remember that Mod_ReWrite uses physical paths (like /usr/bin/htdocs/index.html) that don’t always relate to web directory structures.

9

Thanks for taking the time to help me with this :slight_smile:

I’m confident the rewrite rule itself is correct as if I set Config.debug to 1 in /app/core.php I can login to awstats without issue. It;s only when debig is set to 0 that I get the 401 error?!?

10

How do you access awstats? Is it something like
www.example.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=example.com

If that’s how you access it, is the cgi-bin password protected?

11

I access at www.site.com/awstats and it’s password protected by configuration of the within plugin section of DirectAdmin.

Do you have awstats password protected on your installations that work?

12

I’m wondering if it’s a simlink issue that cakephp doesn’t like. Awstats is a perl script, so it’s probably physically located in /cgi-bin. If logging in through site.com/awstats actually redirects through site.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl then you may need to add something like

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^*/awstats/
RewriteRule ^$ path/to/awstats [L]

Have you looked at app/tmp/logs/debug.log to see if there’s anything there?

At this point, I’m out of ideas. Good luck, and I hope you figure it out.

13

I’ve now posted this on the google group as I found more info on stackoverflow related to this issue. Fingers crossed someone will chime in with a solution.

http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php/browse_thread/thread/c6e48db71efbb81d