[Discuss] Having trouble browsing a backed-up MediaWiki (PHP) site.

[noel at natnix.com]

Hi Alan,

This is an interesting problem!  The problem is that even after URL
translation, your web server will always break urls at the "?".

I'd recommend against the Apache/mod_rewrite route.  I don't think you
can make Apache ignore the "?".

You may want to try something based on Python's SimpleHttpServer:
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-SimpleHTTPServer.html.  Start with
something like this, it may ignore '?' in file names right out of the
box:

===================================================

#! /usr/bin/python
"""
http_no_questions.py - serve files in the current directoy that
                       contain '?' in their names.

USAGE

    http_no_questions.py <port>

    then browse http://localhost:<port>

"""

import SimpleHTTPServer
import BaseHTTPServer

BaseHTTPServer.test(SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler,
                    BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer)

===================================================


--Noel


On Wed, Sep 27, 2006 at 09:39:14PM -0700, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> On 2006-09-28 01:56-0000 Michael Foltinek wrote:
> 
> >I'm sort of pulling this out of /dev/ass, but I think that .htaccess
> >files in directories can override global settings from httpd.conf
> 
> >From my documentation reading today, that appears to be true (if that
> privilege is granted for the directory), but what I need is something to
> place in that file to interpret URL's with embedded question marks simply as
> the corresponding static file name rather than being interpreted as the
> start of some query.
> 
> By the way, anybody can test this problem for themselves if they have apache
> running a website.  Stick a file in there with a question mark in its name
> (for example index?.html), and you will not be able to access that URL
> (unless you substitute %3f for the question mark).  If you figure out how to
> access the URL without making the substitution, please let me know.
> 
> I guess the real problem is that php (and therefore MediaWiki) tend to have
> really weird URL's that include all the internal query machinery rather than
> rational URL's that are easily remembered by humans.  The result of the
> weird URL's is that when wget downloads all the results as a bunch of static
> files you get all these question marks in the file names which convinces
> browser software that you are actually making a query rather than referring
> to a simple static file name.
> 
> I wonder whether mod_rewrite could effectively allow question marks in file
> names? I will have a look at this possibility tomorrow unless somebody has a
> better idea.
> 
> Alan
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
> 
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
> 
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
> for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
> package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
> Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
> (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
> 
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
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