[users@httpd] anything really safe to use in .htaccess?

[Dan Jacobson <ji...@dman.ddts.net>]

What are some robust things an average website author can put in
.htaccess on an average hosting company's machine, that won't cause
one's site to go "500 belly up" when the administrator changes some
config file?

Case in point, my .htaccess was
ErrorDocument 404 /messages/404.html
Options +Indexes
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A8888888
ExpiresByType image/png A7777777

until a week ago when the sysadmin changed some file so now my Options
+Indexes line was causing the whole site to be unaccessible until
discovered today. 

Anyway, probably like anything in computer land, the "in crowd" knows
which .htaccess items are more likely to weather the whims of whatever
the sysadmin does than others... probably I will have to make my own
indexes if I want them and also be safe from the Levis 500 Blues.  Any
other unsafe lines in there? If I put an additional ErrorDocument 500
will that work or is that not something the user can control?

Can I say in there "if any errors are found in .htaccess, just stop
reading it, dont stop serving"?

Well, as you know I am not going to read any more .htaccess docs,
because what i do in there has to mesh with what the sysadm does and i
don't control or even get to see that.

maybe i should just play it safe and not risk anymore weeklong outages
by just removing .htaccess.

Don't tell me that it depends on my sysadm. I know that (that's why
I'm not mentioning the apache version number.)  . What I want to hear
is "Dan, your ErrorDocument line will work on 99% of the hosts I know,
whereas your ExpiresByType , while well intentioned, is just an
accident waiting to happen if the sysadm doesn't remember to ...."
-- 
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780


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Re: [users@httpd] anything really safe to use in .htaccess?

[Joshua Slive <jo...@slive.ca>]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2003, Dan Jacobson wrote:

> What are some robust things an average website author can put in
> .htaccess on an average hosting company's machine, that won't cause
> one's site to go "500 belly up" when the administrator changes some
> config file?

Practically nothing.  You can check the docs on "AllowOverride", which is
what your administrator uses to change things.  But in the end, the only
directives that will really be safe are those that have Override: All, and
there aren't very many of these.

Changing AllowOverride is something a good ISP would not do without
informing its clients.

Joshua.

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