Htaccess gzip compress code suddenly started throwing server error 500

Server Config
1

I have this section of code in my htaccess file on an apache 2.4.23 server. It suddenly started throwing an error 500. If I comment out the filter_module section, the error goes away, but so does gzip compression.

I suspect the hosting provider upgraded apache at some point without telling me, considering I had not touched anything for several weeks.

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Gzip compression
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# Force deflate for mangled headers developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping/
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
# HTML, TXT, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XML, HTC:
<IfModule filter_module>
FilterDeclare   COMPRESS
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/html
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/css
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/plain
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/xml
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/x-component
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/javascript
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/json
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xml
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xhtml+xml
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/rss+xml
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/atom+xml
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/vnd.ms-fontobject
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/svg+xml
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/x-icon
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/x-font-ttf
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $font/opentype
FilterChain     COMPRESS
FilterProtocol  COMPRESS  DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_filter.c>
# Legacy versions of Apache
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon image/svg+xml application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf font/opentype
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

I tried replacing it with the newer filter syntax, but while no server errors are thrown, it doesn’t enable gzip compression either.

<IfModule filter_module>
FilterDeclare   COMPRESS
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'text/html'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'text/css'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'text/plain'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'text/xml'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'text/x-component'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/javascript'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/json'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/xml'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/xhtml+xml'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/rss+xml'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/atom+xml'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/vnd.ms-fontobject'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'image/svg+xml'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'image/x-icon'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'application/x-font-ttf'"
FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE "%{Content_Type} = 'font/opentype'"
FilterChain     COMPRESS
FilterProtocol  COMPRESS  DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</IfModule>

Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks :slight_smile:

2

Perhaps if your host has made some server changes recently they now compress files by default?

3

Unfortunately, no. The headers do not show “content-encoding: gzip” in browser developer tools, and the external gzip checker site http://checkgzipcompression.com/ site says gzip is not enabled.

4

Well, as it turns out, I had to fall back on the “AddOutputFilterByType” method for gzip compression. It just would not take the “FilterProvider” method anymore. Very strange.

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/atom+xml \
  application/javascript\
  application/json \
  application/rss+xml\
  application/vnd.ms-fontobject\
  application/x-font\
  application/x-font-opentype\
  application/x-font-otf\
  application/x-font-truetype\
  application/x-font-ttf\
  application/x-javascript\
  application/x-web-app-manifest+json \
  application/xhtml+xml\
  application/xml\
  font/opentype\
  font/otf\
  font/ttf\
  image/svg+xml\
  image/x-icon\
  text/css\
  text/html\
  text/javascript\
  text/plain\
  text/x-component \
  text/xml\

  # Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
  Header append Vary User-Agent
1 Like
5

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