Symfony2 production; Apache VirtualHost not working

Question

I'm a novice to Symfony2 and MVC frameworks but have some experience with PHP and Apache.

I developed a project on an Apache server on my workstation. I'm trying to deploy my first Symfony2 project on our production Ubuntu server, also running Apache. For some reason I cannot get the behavior I want. The server is running multiple virtual hosts just fine. However, when attempting to go to where the Symfony2 project should show up, I instead get a listing of the directory contents at the root level of the Symfony2 project (though the vhost is pointing to the /web subdirectory). If I manually navigate to the web directory I can get to the project clicking on either the app_dev.php or app.php front controllers, however app.php and app_dev.php persist when using the project instead of giving "pretty" URLs (with the fc hidden).

I've searched for solutions and tried using ./app/console --env=prod cache:clear to no avail. Apache mod_rewrite is enabled, and the Symfony2 default .htaccess file should be handling rewrites even if my vhost isn't (which would be preferred).

Thank you for any help!

Main vhost:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName server.com
    ServerAlias www.server.com
    ServerAdmin webmaster@server.com

    DocumentRoot /var/www/main/public

    <Directory /var/www/main/public>
        AllowOverride all
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        Options MultiViews Indexes FollowSymlinks IncludesNoExec
    </Directory>

    <Location />
        # The main site was done in Zend Framework which uses this.
        SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV "production"
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
        RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
        RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]
    </Location>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error-main.log
    LogLevel error

    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access-main.log combined
    ServerSignature On

    Alias /project /var/www/project/web

</VirtualHost>

Project vhost:

<VirtualHost *:80>

    DocumentRoot /var/www/project/web
    Alias /project /var/www/project/web

    <Directory /var/www/project/web/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all

        DirectoryIndex app.php

    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error-project.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel info

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access-project.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Using the default .htaccess file in project/web/

# Use the front controller as index file. It serves as fallback solution when
# every other rewrite/redirect fails (e.g. in an aliased environment without
# mod_rewrite). Additionally, this reduces the matching process for the
# startpage (path "/") because otherwise Apache will apply the rewritting rules
# to each configured DirectoryIndex file (e.g. index.php, index.html, index.pl).
DirectoryIndex app.php

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    # Redirect to URI without front controller to prevent duplicate content
    # (with and without `/app.php`). Only do this redirect on the initial
    # rewrite by Apache and not on subsequent cycles. Otherwise we would get an
    # endless redirect loop (request -> rewrite to front controller ->
    # redirect -> request -> ...).
    # So in case you get a "too many redirects" error or you always get redirected
    # to the startpage because your Apache does not expose the REDIRECT_STATUS
    # environment variable, you have 2 choices:
    # - disable this feature by commenting the following 2 lines or
    # - use Apache >= 2.3.9 and replace all L flags by END flags and remove the
    #   following RewriteCond (best solution)
    RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
    RewriteRule ^app\.php(/(.*)|$) %{CONTEXT_PREFIX}/$2 [R=301,L]

    # If the requested filename exists, simply serve it.
    # We only want to let Apache serve files and not directories.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
    RewriteRule .? - [L]

    # The following rewrites all other queries to the front controller. The
    # condition ensures that if you are using Apache aliases to do mass virtual
    # hosting, the base path will be prepended to allow proper resolution of the
    # app.php file; it will work in non-aliased environments as well, providing
    # a safe, one-size fits all solution.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}::$1 ^(/.+)(.+)::\2$
    RewriteRule ^(.*) - [E=BASE:%1]
    RewriteRule .? %{ENV:BASE}app.php [L]
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_alias.c>
        # When mod_rewrite is not available, we instruct a temporary redirect of
        # the startpage to the front controller explicitly so that the website
        # and the generated links can still be used.
        RedirectMatch 302 ^/$ /app.php/
        # RedirectTemp cannot be used instead
    </IfModule>
</IfModule>

Answer 1

Your ServerName directive is wrong. There should only stand a domain, no path afterwards. NEVER. If you want your sf project under the /project you have to use an alias in the VHost of the original server.com file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName server.com
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www/other-server.com-stuff
    <Directory /var/www/other-server.com-stuff>
        # stuff for other stuff
    </Directory>

    Alias /project /var/www/project/web
    <Directory /var/www/project/web/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel info

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

if you want only the sf project, simply change the ServerName correctly.

Answer 2

In addition to Pazi's answer – which you should vote up – there are some things you should notice:

In order to have clean URL's, you need to specify the directory index of your virtual host:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ app_dev.php [QSA,L]
RedirectMatch permanent ^/app_dev\.php/(.*) /$1

Node that it is not a good practice to change the .htaccess of your project, but only the virtual host file of your local apache – or any web server – configuration.

For that to work, you need to change the virtual host to:

AllowOverride None

To remove the web/ from the URL, simply define it as the document root of your virtual host:

DocumentRoot /var/www/project/web