Return-Path: owner-new-httpd Received: by taz.hyperreal.com (8.6.12/8.6.5) id HAA05528; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 07:18:54 -0700 Received: from cass41 by taz.hyperreal.com (8.6.12/8.6.5) with SMTP id HAA05522; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 07:18:50 -0700 Received: from cass39.ast.cam.ac.uk by cass41 with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #9) id m0sWP6B-000CMAC; Thu, 13 Jul 95 15:18 BST Received: by cass39.ast.cam.ac.uk (Smail3.1.29.1 #9) id m0sWP6A-0003pVC; Thu, 13 Jul 95 15:18 BST Message-Id: Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 15:18 BST From: drtr@ast.cam.ac.uk (David Robinson) To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com Subject: Re: Those pesky .htaccess files Content-Length: 1883 Sender: owner-new-httpd@apache.org Precedence: bulk Reply-To: new-httpd@apache.org >From: Mark J Cox >Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 13:01:29 +0100 (BST) >It's a real pain that everytime someone accesses a document >(say /usr/local/etc/httpd/docs/index.html) the server stats .htaccess >files in /usr, /usr/local, /usr/local/etc, /usr/local/etc/httpd and >/usr/local/etc/httpd/docs first. > >How about the option of caching the fact that a .htaccess file does or >doesn't exist in each directory? You could nominate directories to >be cached (so ~/ directories for instance wouldn't be to allow users to >change .htaccess files immediately, others would wait until the server >was restarted). > >This could be complex; but even just saying in a config file: > >NoAccessFile /usr >NoAccessFile /usr/local >NoAccessFile /usr/local/etc >NoAccessFile /usr/local/etc/httpd > >Would save four stats per request! Has anyone profiled Apache/Shambhala >to see how much time is wasted on these stats per request? Does anyone actually rely on .htaccess files in directories above DocumentRoot? I would rather that was disabled, but perhaps with a compatability option. Of course, .htaccess is a bit of a misnomer, anyway. Part of the problem is that it can contain two types of directives; those which could apply to a sub-tree of the directory, and those which are only useful in the leaf directory. e.g. consider http://a/dira/dirb/dirc/ /root/dira/.htaccess, /root/dira/dirb/.htaccess and /root/dira/dirb/dirc/.htaccess might all contain directives such as AuthName which would apply to subdirectories of dirc/. However, /root/dira/dirb/dirc/.htaccess might also contain directives specific to that directory only, such as AddDescription. Thus, if I want to allow per-directory AddDescription directives, I have to enable full heirachical .htaccess searching, whereas it reading a single file in the target directory would suffice. David.