In the normal Windows fashion, it took me 2 hours to do something that should have taken 5 minutes.  Setup: A windows server is running Apache and a self-contained inventory webserver.  Going to the servers address “inventory.domainname.com” should take it from Apache and bounce it to the inventory server is which incidentally requires the connection to be on port 8080.

Normally I would go into the .htaccess file and add one line

Redirect 301 / http://newip:8080

/ indicates that root is moved and 301 is the condition for a permanent move.  Easy

Here it wasn’t so.  First I had to modify the httpd.conf from:

AccessFileName .htaccess

To

AccessFileName ht.acl .htaccess

This makes it possible to create the file in explorer.  There are other ways around it but this is pretty easy.  Just create a file named ht.acl and treat it like a .htaccess file.

After that was done it seemed like Apache didn’t want to read the access file.  I had to change AllowOverride in the <Directory> command.  Originally it was “AllowOverride None” but it should be “AllowOverride All” so that the access file is given some power.  With it set as none it was as useless as a teenage boy at an anime convention.

I suppose overall it wasn’t difficult, but in the process I had to rewrite the whole .conf file.  It was an updated install that simply copied its configuration from an old one, preserving the old now incorrect file locations and all.