I have a website with a url that uses mod_rewrite to rewrite the files (all in the same folder).
The url is this shape: /sales/<category>
And this is translated by mod_rewrite below:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^sales/([a-z0-9A-Z\-]+)/?$ /sales/boatlist.php?folder=$1 [NC,L]
So the destination file on the server is:
/sales/boatlist.php?folder=yachts
However, here is my issue.
When this exact category is requested (sales/yachts), the page that is loaded is an apache forbidden reply, and the PHP is not loaded at all; boatlist.php is not called. I deduce from this that there is a file or folder in the directory (therefore escaping the mod_rewrite via the RewriteCond) that is marked as forbidden,
however on the server no file/folder exists with this name and no other mod_rewrites would relate (and shouldn't return 403 forbidden reply even if they did).
I have found server error logs stating:
AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /farm/site/public/sales/yachts
And have obviously researched this error and found it doesn't seem to apply, as my Apache version is 2.4.25 (and has been installed for a long time) and has the current httpd.conf of:
<Directory "/var/www/html">
Options All
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
As far as I can trace, nothing has been updated in the recent days to suddenly cause this issue, but more so, the issue only occurs for a specific url; not for any other URLs, rewritten or not.
http://site.co.uk/sales/dinghies Works.
http://site.co.uk/sales/yachts returns error 403 when no file exists.
What Can I do to further investigate and establish (solve) what's going on here?
(The PHP file the (rewritten) url reaches works perfectly when typed in manually.)
EDIT
Full .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?msg=404
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php?msg=403
ErrorDocument 500 /index.php?msg=500
Options -Indexes
#Set asset items to cache for 1 week.
<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpe?g|png|ico|css|js|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=1972800, public, must-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
#force requests to begin with a slash.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/
RewriteRule .* - [R=403,L]
#disabled for subdomain
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
#if not a file or dir then use as a boat details page variable.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^boats/(\d+)-?([\w-]+)/?$ /sales/boatdetails.php?boatid=$1 [NC,L]
#if not a file or dir then use as a boatlist page variable.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^sales/([a-z0-9A-Z\-]+)/?$ /sales/boatlist.php?folder=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule .* - [L]
<Files php.ini>
Require all denied
</Files>
<LimitExcept GET POST HEAD>
deny from all
</LimitExcept>
