Some time ago I requested help with a rewrite rule to strip
trailing slash(es) from all URLs in our joomla website, but I'm
still having problems. This is the rule I am currently working with:
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ https://linuxsecurity.com$1 [R=301,L]
It works fine for any URL other than the homepage. Somehow for the
homepage it creates an infinite loop, despite using "L", so
perhaps I don't understand what it's doing. The (.*) is supposed
to match any character, but there wouldn't be any preceding
elements for the homepage.
The problem as I see it is that, for the homepage, (.*) would be
null, so $1 would also be null? This then creates the same URL as
the one we're trying to fix.
First it appears to work properly (trimmed for legibility):
init rewrite engine with requested uri /
applying pattern '^(.*)/+$' to uri '/'
rewrite '/' -> 'https://linuxsecurity.com'
explicitly forcing redirect with https://linuxsecurity.com
escaping https://linuxsecurity.com for redirect
redirect to https://linuxsecurity.com [REDIRECT/301]
then it looks like it inits the rewrite engine again?
init rewrite engine with requested uri /, referer:
https://linuxsecurity.com/
applying pattern '^(.*)/+$' to uri '/', referer:
https://linuxsecurity.com/
rewrite '/' -> 'https://linuxsecurity.com', referer:
https://linuxsecurity.com/
explicitly forcing redirect with https://linuxsecurity.com,
referer: https://linuxsecurity.com/
escaping https://linuxsecurity.com for redirect, referer:
https://linuxsecurity.com/
redirect to https://linuxsecurity.com [REDIRECT/301], referer:
https://linuxsecurity.com/
This just loops repeatedly until it dies. I've also made sure
there's only one "RewriteEngine on" in the virtual host config and
the .htaccess. Would that even matter?
What am I doing wrong? I've tried a thousand variations of this to
no avail.
You will need to stop using .htaccess files to prevent looping, as a
first step. Edit your vhost.
I've removed the .htaccess in the document root and there are no other
Includes in the vhost. I've also tried adding [END] but none of it has
made any difference.
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ https://linuxsecurity.com$1 [R=301,END]
I've also set logging to trace5 (even though none of the entries were
above trace4) - shouldn't it provide me with enough info to determine
where/why it's looping?
If I remove the one RewriteEngine statement in my vhost config, it's
clear that it does not process any RewriteRules at all.
dave