Apache Configuration Advice

[Ian Skinner-3]

We have a strange issue that our administer is unable to resolve which
is way beyond my experience with Apache.  I just program the web sites,
I do not administer the boxes on which they live.  A long description of
our current state and how we got here follows.

We have two domains living on our main production box: (Well there are
other private domains but these two are of concern today).
www.cdpr.ca.gov
www.schoolipm.info

The School IPM site points to a sub-directory of the main CDPR site.
The DocumentRoot directory of the CDPR site is /rootDir/aDir/bDir/htdocs/.
The DocumentRoot directory of the School IPM site is
/rootDir/aDir/bDir/htdocs/cfdocs/apps/schoolipm/.

A few months ago we reorganized a fair amount of the content of the main
CDPR site.  When we did this we created an .htaccess file to put 301
redirects in for all the moved content.  We also added a custom 404
error file and a directive to deny access to the .htaccess file.

..htaccess @ /rootDir/aDir/bDir/htdocs/docs
-----------
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404error.htm

#Directory changes 09-11-2007
Redirect 301 /docs/budgets http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/dept/budgets
Redirect 301 /docs/cac http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/county/cacltrs
Redirect 301 /docs/canot http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/registration/canot
....
Many many more redirects.
....
<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>
----------

We had to put this .htaccess file in the main sub-directory of the
updates, because if we put it in the site root it would cause the
www.schoolipm.info site to throw 500 Internal Server errors.  This works
fine for the redirects since they all are in the /docs/ sub-directory.  
But it does mean that the custom 404 error file is only active under
this sub-directory.


Recently we also relocated the School IPM content.  Following the above
pattern we created another .htaccess file to put into the old School IPM
directory.

..htaccess @ /rootDir/aDir/bDir/htdocs/cfdocs/apps/schoolipm
----------
Redirect 301 /cfdocs/apps/schoolipm/ http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/schoolipm/
Redirect 301 / http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/schoolipm/

<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>
----------

To make this work we had to modify the httpd.conf file for the School
IPM virtual host block to allow for the .htaccess to work without
throwing the 500 Internal Server error for www.schoolipm.info.  So we
added the following block.

httpd.conf
----------
....
<Directory "/rootDir/aDir/bDir/htdocs/cfdocs/apps/schoolipm/">
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes
    AllowOverride AuthConfig Options Limit FileInfo
</Directory>
....
----------

And this works.  So right now all the 301 redirects work for both the
www.cdpr.ca.gov and the www.schoolipm.info domains and the custom 404
error works for all content under the www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/ sub-directory.

PROBLEM
------------
Well since we thought we had resolved the issue with the
www.schoolipm.info domain and .htaccess files throwing 500 Internal
Server errors, we thought we would move the original .htaccess file from
the /docs/ sub-directory to the root directory so that the custom 404
error file would be used throughout the site.

NO GO!!!  When we did that, www.schoolipm.info would start to throw 500
Internal Server errors again.  On the chance that it was complaining
about all the 301 redirects for some strange reason, we created another
..htaccess file that just had the custom 404 declaration in it in the
root directory.  This was no good either, we still get 500 Internal
Server errors if there is an .htaccess file in the root
/rootDir/aDir/bDir/htdocs/ directory for thw www.schoolipm.info domain.  
What is weird is that the www.cdpr.ca.gov/schoolipm/ domain that points
to the exact some content and file works just fine and throws no errors.

Can anybody provide some advice on this issue or other locations where I
could ask about this problem.

TIA
Ian

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