Hello :)

After much experimentation, I have assembled a very basic test of rewriting but it doesn't seem to do anything.

On a Debian Squeeze system, I baselined Apache by:

# aptitude purge apache2 apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common
# rm -fr /etc/apache2 /var/www /var/log/apache2
# aptitude -y install \
 apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork \
 libapache2-mod-perl2 libapache2-mod-php5 \
 libapache2-mod-python libapache2-reload-perl \
 nagios3 nagios3-cgi
# a2enmod rewrite

Note: the installation command also restores packages that were removed because they depend on the re-initialised Apache packages.

Created /etc/apache2/conf.d/rewrite_tests:

LogLevel debug
LogFormat  "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" \"%e\"" combined

RewriteEngine on
RewriteLog  /var/log/apache2/rewrite.log
RewriteLogLevel 7
RewriteRule  ^ - [env=FOO:BAR]
RewriteRule  ^/*(.*) http://192.168.3.51/$1 [L,R,NE]

Notes:

1. The LogFormat re-definition adds envar reporting.
   
2. The second RewriteRule is based on the example given in [httpd.apache.org ] in the Canonical Hostnames section, for the port 80 example.
   
3. The test server is normally accessed at 192.168.168.51 but is also configured with 192.168.3.51

After restarting Apache:

1. /var/log/apache2/rewrite.log is created.
   
2. Browsing

   http://192.168.168.51

   displays the as-installed index.html but still with

   http://192.168.168.51

   in the URL bar. Then ...
   
3. /var/log/apache2/access.log shows "-" in the %e field.
   
4. /var/log/apache2/rewrite.log is empty.
   
5. /var/log/apache2/error.log shows no errors, only startup messages.

Does the evidence support the theory that rewriting is not doing anything?

Could /etc/apache2/conf.d/rewrite_tests be better devised to test basic rewriting functionality?

Best

Charles