Testing for Apache .htaccess settings

I think I've set mod_rewrite and AllowOverride FileInfo Options in Apache properly but Gallery3 still isn't letting me edit permissions on albums. Does anybody know a handy way, perhaps a snippet of PHP code, to view the computed values for Apache settings on a particular folder? I have my own server, not a shared server account, so I have full access.

Here's how you can debug it. Create a file in modules/gallery/controllers called "x.php" and put this in it:

class x_Controller extends Controller {
  public function test() {
    print access::htaccess_works() ? "yes" : "no";
  }
}

Then browse to http://your.site/gallery3/index.php/x and you should see "no" appear. This means that it thinks that htaccess doesn't work. Then go and edit modules/gallery/helpers/access.php and look for this code:

   685    /**                                                                                                        
   686     * Verify that our htaccess based permission system actually works.  Create a temporary                    
   687     * directory containing an .htaccess file that uses mod_rewrite to redirect /verify to                     
   688     * /success.  Then request that url.  If we retrieve it successfully, then our redirects are               
   689     * working and our permission system works.                                                                
   690     */                                                                                                        
   691    static function htaccess_works() {                                                                         
   692      $success_url = url::file("var/security_test/success");                                                   
   693                                                                                                               
   694      @mkdir(VARPATH . "security_test");                                                                       
   695      try {                                                                                                    
   696        if ($fp = @fopen(VARPATH . "security_test/.htaccess", "w+")) {                                         
   697          fwrite($fp, "RewriteEngine On\n");                                                                   
   698          fwrite($fp, "RewriteRule verify $success_url [L]\n");                                                
   699          fclose($fp);                                                                                         
   700        }                                                                                                      
   701                                                                                                               
   702        if ($fp = @fopen(VARPATH . "security_test/success", "w+")) {                                           
   703          fwrite($fp, "success");                                                                              
   704          fclose($fp);                                                                                         
   705        }                                                                                                      
   706                                                                                                               
   707        list ($response) = remote::do_request(url::abs_file("var/security_test/verify"));                      
   708        $works = $response == "HTTP/1.1 200 OK";                                                               
   709      } catch (Exception $e) {                                                                                 
   710        @dir::unlink(VARPATH . "security_test");                                                               
   711        throw $e;                                                                                              
   712      }                                                                                                        
   713      @dir::unlink(VARPATH . "security_test");                                                                 
   714                                                                                                               
   715      return $works;                                                                                           
   716    }                                                                                                          

The first thing I'd do is to comment out those "dir::unlink" calls on line 710 and 713. Then when you run the test script, it'll leave around gallery3/var/security_test and we can examine it. Then open http://your.site/gallery3/var/security_test/verify in your browser. What do you get back? If you get the word "success" then the .htaccess system is working and we have a bug of some kind (or your config is too weird for us to handle). Make sure that the var/security_test dir gets created! It should have two files in it, one marked .htaccess with something like this in it:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule verify /gallery3/var/security_test/success [L]

And a file called "success" with the word "success" in it.

I tried your first step, creating x.php, and when I viewed it in the browser I got a Kohana_404_Exception if I recall correctly. I got this for a number of other files in that directory, incidentally. I found that welcome_message.php was the simplest one that also worked but when I tried copying it to x.php it still didn't work but I got a blank page without even any HTML instead of the 404 error.

So I tried editing welcome_message.php itself and as a test I tacked a string literal onto the variable printed out in the main function. When I went to the welcome_message URL instead of showing the HTML it had previously shown I got the blank page again. I tried changing the code back but it didn't fix anything, I still got the blank page.

So I tried the next step, without success, but after changing the code of that page even gallery3's index page now returns blank HTML. Changing the code back doesn't fix that either. (But that's okay, all I had was test data.)

I have seen this behavior constantly; I've actually been unable to edit any PHP pages at all nor change the variables under "Advanced" settings because doing so always causes an error that can't be fixed by putting it back the way it was before. The problems persist even after restarting Apache. Is there some kind of caching mechanism I need to turn off or a developer mode I need to set?

PHP 5.2.4 by the way, and Ubuntu 8.04 and MySQL 5.051

@bromide: Oh -- I had an error in my instructions. You need to browse to /gallery3/index.php/x/test <-- that "/test" part was missing. You're not trying to open x.php directly in the browser are you? That won't work. Either way, please start a new forum topic for this issue so that we're not having an in-depth conversation on this more general topic.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule verify /gallery3_Cur2AnhR/var/security_test/success [L]

Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that RewriteRule directive is forbidden: ...httproot/gallery3_Cur2AnhR/var/security_test/success