Joshua Slive schrieb:
On 8/18/06, Carsten Wiedmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I don't complete agree with you... IMHO the basic "problem" is:
> The "URL-path" in ScriptAlias (like in Alias and Location) is
> compared case sensitive first, also on Windows. The "normal" URI to
> path translation (directory-path) not on Windows. That should be
> better explained in the manual.
Yes, it should be explained that *Alias* are case-sensitive in their
first argument.
Ok.
But your diagnosis is not quite correct. URLs are
always case sensitive in httpd (and in the HTTP RFC).
That's a good point (IMHO they SHOULD, not MUST). But see below...
The fact that
multiple different URLs happen to map to the same filesystem location
is an artificat of the filesystem, not of the path translation code.
httpd does handle case-insensitivity correctly in its filesystem code
(such as the <Directory> block).
Now an other point of view ;-)
Ok, we can see, that httpd makes exactly what the source code says. URI
comparison is made case-sensitive. And the last step, mapping the URI to a
file system location, depends on the file system.
(And we know: URI's are not file system locations, only resources...)
But what happens in real life (all steps together)?
On *nix:
- with a directory "$DOCUMENT_ROOT/foo",
the URI /FOO is not the same as /foo
- with an alias /foo for a directory "foo" inside DocumentRoot,
the URI /FOO is not the same as /foo
- with an alias /bar for a directory "bar" outside DocumentRoot,
the URI /BAR is not the same as /bar
- with an alias /bar for a directory "bar" and a subdir "sub"
outside DocumentRoot, the URI /bar/SUB is not the same as /bar/sub
Now the same for e.g. Windows:
- with a directory "$DOCUMENT_ROOT/foo",
the URI /FOO is the same as /foo
- with an alias /foo for a directory "foo" inside DocumentRoot,
the URI /FOO is the same as /foo,
but sometimes with a different behavior
- with an alias /bar for a directory "bar" outside DocumentRoot,
the URI /BAR is not the same as /bar
- with an alias /bar for a directory "bar" and a subdir "sub"
outside DocumentRoot, the URI /bar/SUB is the same as /bar/sub
(that's really interesting:
only parts of the abs_path are case-sensitive)
And you think, that's a consistent behavior and according to the RFC 2616
(3.2.3)? Don't forget. That's not really a problem of the file system.
Because NTFS for example is not only case-insensitive, it's also
case-preserving. Thus httpd should know the real case.
You remember this little sentence in the RFC 2616 (15.2)?
| If an HTTP server translates HTTP URIs directly into file system calls,
| the server MUST take special care not to serve files
| that were not intended to be delivered to HTTP clients.
> > On 8/18/06, Mark J Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > I think the right response here is to make it more explicit in the
> > > documentation that putting a ScriptAlias cgi-bin inside document
> > > root is bad.
> >
> > Yes, this is a relatively common configuration error.
> > ...
> > Instead, you can use:
> > <example>
> > <Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/cgi-dir>
> > SetHandler cgi-script
> > Options ExecCGI
> > </Directory>
> > </example>
Why is it really bad to have a ScriptAlias inside the DocumentRoot? It's
only another file system location. And it's only one line in the config file
instead of four. You have only a problem because of the "unexpected"
behavior of httpd with case-insensitive/case-preserved file systems ;-) And
on Windows, the simplest way to make a consistent behavior with URI's is to
have a alias match case-insensitive.
BTW:
That's not only a problem with Windows. Don't forget the default file system
of OS X. HFS+ is also case-insensitive.
Regards,
Carsten
