Re: [cobalt-users] htaccess stopped working - RaQ4i

[Travis Ogdon <togdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Khalil@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> On one of our RaQ4i servers, ".htaccess" has stopped working for all sites.
> Here below is my ".htaccess" file which used to work earlier fine:
> 
> #require group admin
> require user admin
> Authname CobaltRaQ
> Authtype Basic
> 
> When i go to the site, it prompts for username and password. I give username
> as "admin" and the password. But it doesn't recognize the password. Of
> course, the password is valid and it works for admin gui, mail and ssh. I
> tried with other usernames but no luck. It started happening suddenly.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Thanks
> -Khalil Ahmad


This is going to sound really stupid, because it is...

For some completely lame reason we have several RaQ4x's that lose the
following section of /etc/httpd/conf/access.conf:

   <Directory /home/sites/sitexxx>
   AllowOverride All
   Options All
   </Directory>

We tend to lose 100 at a time, typically site100-199, but not always. We've
fixed it by adding those sections over again "by hand" in the past. Lately
we've mostly given up on that since it's next to impossible for our NOC to
detect that it has happened, and we've instead altered the AllowOverride line
in the <Directory /home/sites/> section to from:

   AllowOverride AuthConfig Indexes Limit

to:

   AllowOverride AuthConfig Indexes Limit All

Just:

   AllowOverride All

works too.

I'd be interested in any security risks others see in doing this. As far as I
can tell there are none. I'd also be interested to know if anyone has any
ideas why it happens. We've had it happen on several RaQs, as have several of
our busier Colo customers. We traced it at one point to FrontPage *perhaps*
but we gave up on figuring out how enabling/disabling FP for a site would end
up affecting ~100 sites around it in the config file.

Also... if you're reading Bruce... We'd love a real fix, as everyone else
would too I'm sure... ;)

Khalil, unless everyone else pipes in and says it's a dumb idea I say you just
change the AllowOverride line, restart Apache (/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart)
and move on.

-- Travis