Apache2 Debian Squeeze .htaccess Disabled

I recently struggled with the same problem on my Fedora 10 system. In my case the culprit was some odd redirection that I was doing in Apache. Specifically, I use a content management system (Drupal, to be exact) that within it's .htaccess includes the following redirection logic to redirect missing files to a PHP script:

# Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

It makes sense that the above only affects the PUT method since in that case REQUEST_FILENAME does not exist.

Not having the WebDAV area inside of the Drupal area, which seems like a reasonable constraint, fixes the problem.

Also, I think it is likely that SELinux would result in a different error, but it's not mentioned in the discussion above. Did you try disabling SELinux?

Hmm, I am pretty suspicious of the config file

/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/30_subversion_ssl_vhost.conf

When you remove the '-D SSL' you will cause all parts of the configuration files that are enclosed in ... to be skipped. The default SSL vhost file on my Gentoo box is wrapped in that tag so I wonder if, by removing the '-D SSL', you are preventing the config in 30_subversion_ssl_vhost.conf from being run at all and if that is what is allowing Apache to start.

If you temporarily remove the file 30_subversion_ssl_vhost.conf from /etc/apache2/vhosts.d does Apache run? Are there any other SSL related vhost.conf files in vhosts.d? My reasonably fresh/unused Apache install's vhosts.d directory looks like this:

# pwd && ls
/etc/apache2/vhosts.d
00_default_ssl_vhost.conf  00_default_vhost.conf  default_vhost.include

edit 1:

So much for that theory :) I am now wondering if the problem is with the Apache SSL setup itself. I apologize if I am covering ground you have already checked but I am wondering if you could do the following to help verify your Apache install.

On my Apache install with working SSL the use flags are as follows:

# emerge -av apache

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild     U ] www-servers/apache-2.2.11-r2 [2.2.11] USE="ssl -debug -doc -ldap (-selinux) -sni -static -suexec -threads" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias -asis -auth_digest -authn_dbd -cern_meta -charset_lite -dbd -dumpio -ident -imagemap -log_forensic -proxy -proxy_ajp -proxy_balancer -proxy_connect -proxy_ftp -proxy_http -substitute -version" APACHE2_MPMS="-event -itk -peruser -prefork -worker" 64 kB

In particular do you have the 'ssl' USE flag set?

Also, could you use equery to verify the integrity of your apache2 install? If you do not have the equery command you can install it by running 'emerge -av gentoolkit'. The following command should verify the integrity of your apache install:

equery check apache

On my server the above command gives the following output:

[ Checking www-servers/apache-2.2.11 ]
!!! /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/00_default_ssl_vhost.conf has wrong mtime (is 1256620928, should be 1246793824)
!!! /etc/apache2/modules.d/00_default_settings.conf has wrong mtime (is 1246796304, should be 1246793824)
!!! /etc/conf.d/apache2 has incorrect md5sum
 * 429 out of 432 files good

edit 2:

Well the install looks good to me, so much for theory 2. I am wondering if we can coax Apache into giving some more information on startup. In /etc/conf.d/apache2 if you change your APACHE2_OPTS line from:

APACHE2_OPTS="-D DEFAULT_VHOST -D INFO -D SSL -D SSL_DEFAULT_VHOST -D LANGUAGE"

to

APACHE2_OPTS="-X -e debug -D DEFAULT_VHOST -D INFO -D SSL -D SSL_DEFAULT_VHOST -D LANGUAGE"

and then start Apache (/etc/init.d/apache2 start) the daemon should stay in the foreground (the -X flag) and output debuging messages as it starts (the -e debug option). Maybe this will give a clue as to why it is dying on startup.