Topic: mod_rewrite rule to prevent access to a specific page ?

[fitzgerac]

Hi all. Could someone give me a little advice with this mod_rewrite rule I'm trying to create. I am very new to Apache admin. Here's the issue:
I have 3 vhosts running on my HTTPD Apache 2.2.24 server: Server1, Server2, Server3. Each vhost is connected to a Weblogic application server. We are trying to prevent access to the Example.portal page on each application server. So the URLs I'm trying to rewrite are:
- Server1.domain.com/PortalWeb/Example.portal
- Server2.domain.com/PortalWeb/Example.portal
- Server3.domain.com/PortalWeb/Example.portal

So, I would like to redirect the above URLs back to the 'root' of the website. ie: server1.domain.com. Here is my rewrite rule:
RewriteRule ^(.*)/Example\.portal$ http://$1 [NC]

So, the rule is matching correctly to URLs that contain Example.portal, however the back reference from (.*) does not seem to map to $1.

Can anybody offer any advice? Thanks!

[Steffen]

You can try some like with variable HTTP_HOST:

RewriteRule /(.*)/Example\.portal(.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

When SSL or no SSL you can play with:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on


Steffen

[fitzgerac]

Wow, thanks Steffen. That worked like a charm. Although, I don't understand why...

[fitzgerac]

Hey steffen (or anybody)... I guess this rewrite rule still isn't completely working. Here is the rule as I have it now:

RewriteRule ^(.*)/Example\.portal/(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}$1 [L,R=301,NC]

And the rule is working when the request is for Server1.domain.com/Example.portal and
Server1.domain.com/Example.portal/SubFolder/Example.html
but doesn't seem to work for
Server1.domain.com/SubFolderPortalWeb/Example.portal

Any ideas out there? thanks in advance.

[Steffen]

Try to remove first slash in the rule: ...^(.*)Example\.....

Steffen

[fitzgerac]

Thanks again Steffen, but that still doesn't work. I think the problem with the rule:
RewriteRule ^(.*)Example\.portal(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}$1 [L,R=301,NC]
is that the second (.*) will match only if there are more characters after Example.portal. However, in the case of the URL Server1.domain.com/SubFolderPortalWeb/Example.portal
there are no more characters after Example.portal, so the second (.*) doesn't match.
Is there a special character that represents any character including no characters?

thanks in advance again!

[admin]

Try to add an second rule with the last (.*) removed.