Apache 2.4 Mod Speling

sweeny_here · 02-24-2017, 11:39 AM

Hello - I am trying to implement mod_speling on Apache 2.4 running on RH v6.8 The idea so ignore case of the URL on the destination file system, by way of file names or directories.

There are multiple sites configured in the vhosts directory, each with it's own virtual hosts file. The spelling module has been enabled in the server config file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.

Inside one of the virtual host files the following has been added -

Code:

<Directory "${APACHE_DOCUMENT_ROOT}/publish">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        <IfModule mod_speling.c>
                CheckCaseOnly on
                CheckSpelling on
        </IfModule>
</Directory>

The server has been restared but the URL's are still case sensitive. Yes I know that all incoming URL's can be rewrote to lowercase but the problem is not all URL's in the configs are in lower case - hence the need for this module.

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

Theo

r3sistance · 02-24-2017, 12:06 PM

What do you mean RH4? I hope that isn't Redhat 4...

Anyways it looks like you have set the CaseOnly before enabling the module, pretty sure you have your two lines the wrong way around, CheckSpelling needs to come first I believe.

also does speling appear in the output of

Code:

apachectl -M

bathory · 02-24-2017, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Inside one of the virtual host files the following has been added -

<Directory "${APACHE_DOCUMENT_ROOT}/publish">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
<IfModule mod_speling.c>
CheckCaseOnly on
CheckSpelling on
</IfModule>
</Directory>

The server has been restared but the URL's are still case sensitive

Please note that using the above configuration mod_spelling is applied only to anything under /docroot/publish. If you want to apply it for the whole vhost, ditch the starting <Directory...> and the closing </Directory> tags

Regards

sweeny_here · 02-27-2017, 06:47 AM

Hello - thanks for the replies.

I still can't get it to work.

Instead I pulled a Docker Apache and tried it there instead and it works as expected by enabling the module in the httpd.conf file and also adding the following lines to the same file.

Code:

<IfModule mod_speling.c>
                CheckCaseOnly on
                CheckSpelling on
</IfModule>

Any ideas?

r3sistance · 02-27-2017, 07:19 AM

What distribution and version are you using? It could be a bug in the version of mod_speling

sundialsvcs · 02-27-2017, 08:05 AM

No, I never got it to work, either. I'm not sure that it actually does work.

And in any case, it would be doomed to be very inefficient, if it did.

Eye theenk ewe halve two chick yuor spelin yourselff.

(And fix your case-sensitive-name conflicts.)

sweeny_here · 02-27-2017, 09:39 AM

The distribution is - Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.8 (Santiago) and the server version is Apache/2.4.3 (Unix).

bathory · 02-27-2017, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweeny_here

Hello - thanks for the replies.

I still can't get it to work.

Instead I pulled a Docker Apache and tried it there instead and it works as expected by enabling the module in the httpd.conf file and also adding the following lines to the same file.

Code:

<IfModule mod_speling.c>
                CheckCaseOnly on
                CheckSpelling on
</IfModule>

Any ideas?

It should work!
Anyway, you can stick the above snippet into /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, so it's available for the whole server including vhosts.

sundialsvcs · 02-27-2017, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bathory

It should work!
Anyway, you can stick the above snippet into /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, so it's available for the whole server including vhosts.

I tried that, too. Didn't work. Put it in directories and locations ... didn't work. For me, at least, "the damned thing just didn't work."

Your Mileage May Vary.™

bathory · 02-28-2017, 12:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs

I tried that, too. Didn't work. Put it in directories and locations ... didn't work. For me, at least, "the damned thing just didn't work."

Your Mileage May Vary.™

Are you the same as OP?
Anyway it should work. To verify that apache reads the config, you could make a typo in the config and see if apache complains on restart, e.g. use:

Code:

 CheckCaseOnlyz on
 CheckSpelling on

Also note that while case sensitive works fine, spelling does not work very well.
It could fix errors with the file extension (e.g. htm instead hrml), but no errors in the filename (indx.htm instead of index.htm)

sweeny_here · 02-28-2017, 03:45 AM

Yes Apache configtest picks up on

Code:

CheckCaseOnlyz on

I did some further digging around on Mod Speling and came across this forum - https://www.drupal.org/node/268561

It suggests that if Mod Rewrite is enabled alongside Mod Speling that there will be a conflict, resulting in Mod Speling not working.

Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

r3sistance · 02-28-2017, 03:55 AM

They are definitely going to have issues working together, which takes presidency if they both see an action they can take with a url? What if you are redirecting something that doesn't exist to something that does, should mod_speling get involved? While technically you could get them to work together, you'd need to be very careful with the configuration else you will end out with a lot of ambiguous behavior.

bathory · 02-28-2017, 04:26 AM

Quote:

It suggests that if Mod Rewrite is enabled alongside Mod Speling that there will be a conflict, resulting in Mod Speling not working.

Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

I can verify that there is no conflict between mod_rewrite and mod_speling.
But as r3sistance pointed out above, you may get some unpredictable results, because mod_speling could change a URL that you want to handle through mod_rewrite and vice-versa.

sweeny_here · 02-28-2017, 04:29 AM

Thanks for the advice r3sistance.

Is there anyway of setting a priority level to say that Mod Speling should run first - if no match found, then execute Mod Rewrite?

bathory · 02-28-2017, 05:52 AM

Quote:

Is there anyway of setting a priority level to say that Mod Speling should run first - if no match found, then execute Mod Rewrite?

You cannot set a priority, that's why you may get unpredictable results.
Given a URL, both modules will examine it and see if they need to do something.
So the URL can be changed/not changed by mod_speling and after passing through mod_rewrite it can be changed/not changed again and so on. When one of the 2 modules stops changing the URL, the other one will make another pass and will stop too.