[users@httpd] mod_rewrite & mod_proxy & %2F in URL

[Markus Stockhausen <ma...@collogia.de>]

Hello.

We used Apache 2.0.54 as a reverse proxy for an internet webmail access with the
following rewrite rule:

AllowEncodedSlashes On
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule
   /(.*)/MessagePart/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)-H.txt
   http://127.0.0.1:8100/$1/MessagePart/$2\%2F$3/$4-H.txt [P]

It is essential for the mailserver to get the %2F character instead of an /.
Otherwise the request results in an "404 not found error". The ruleset worked
well until we upgraded to 2.0.58. Suddenly the rewrite produced another URL
string. What before was an %2F now results in an %252F.

We could track down that problem to the following patch that came with version
2.0.55: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=rev&revision=227435

Obviously the old (but for us correct) url translation worked in three steps:
step 1: mod_rewrite: .../... -> ...%2F...
step 2: mod_proxy: ...%2F... -> ...%252F...
step 3: mod_proxy: ...%252F... -> ...%2F...

With the patch step 3 is now obsolete and we have no possibility to encode an /
character into an %2F because mod_proxy will always replace any % charachter
it finds with the %25 chars.

Has anyone an idea of how to come around this problem. The only solution we
found was to disable the patch and to force the behaviour as it was before.

Best regards.

Markus Stockhausen

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project.
See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info.
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@httpd.apache.org
   "   from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@httpd.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@httpd.apache.org