Problems installing Drupal - server won't recognise htaccess file

By smb1970 on 25 Oct 2011 at 10:52 UTC

Hi,
I'm struggling with an installation on Easily.co.uk.

The server has a /website folder.
I have uploaded Drupal 7.8 onto the server and into this folder and renamed the folder Drupal 7.8 folder /drupal

With no modifications the site opens the index.html file in the /website folder.

When I copy the .htaccess file from the /website/drupal/ folder into the /drupal folder and uncomment the RewriteBase /drupal line I would expect the domain to open up Drupal ready for the install but it doesn't instead it throws me a 500 Internal Server Error. I'm guessing I'm missing something. If anyone has any pointers that could help out it would be appreciated.

best regards Steve

Comments

dunno

John_B commented 25 October 2011 at 11:07

I am not sure if I followed, but did you copy all of the Drupal files into the same directory as .htaccess? When you unzip Drupal it makes a directory drupal-7.8 or something. Then move all the files and folders, as well as moving .htaccess, from ./website/drupal-7.8 to ./website as in
pwd
~/website
mv -./drupal-7.8/* .
mv ./drupal-7.8/.* .

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

make sure that apache have

artofeclipse commented 25 October 2011 at 11:43

make sure that apache have mod_rewrite enabled and in the apache configuration for the website make sure that AllowOverride is allowed.

  .....
  AllowOverride All
  .....

Thanks,
Ma'moun.othman

http://artofeclipse.com/
http://vardot.com/

Thanks for the advice, I'll

smb1970 commented 25 October 2011 at 12:58

Thanks for the advice, I'll look into it.
@John_B

The Drupal files currently are sitting in /website/drupal/

The .htaccess file is sat in /website/

I read on here to do it this way. What's a better way to do it?

Best regards Steve

you just need to put

artofeclipse commented 25 October 2011 at 13:29

you just need to put .htaccess in the same directory, just check for the mod_rewrite and allowoverride in the apache configuration file.

Thanks,
Ma'moun.othman

http://artofeclipse.com/
http://vardot.com/

Thanks for the suggestion. I

smb1970 commented 25 October 2011 at 17:22

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't appear to have access to any Apache files. It's a really basic hosting package. I literally have ftp access to a very small set of folders and access to a MySQL database.
Best regards Steve

not needed

John_B commented 25 October 2011 at 18:28

.htaccess goes in drupal root ie ~/www or ./public_html. You have access to this directory, it is where your Drupal files live! In your case it seems to be /website. Whichever directory your index.php is in.

The point which is easy to overlook is that a bulk move or copy with mv or cp does not move the hidden files, so after doing it for the rest of the files you need to do it again for the .htaccess and any other hidden files you need. To display them from command line remember you need ls -a (not just ls) on a linux server, or the hidden files do not show!

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

easily.co.uk

ajitartist commented 12 March 2012 at 05:39

Hey there i was having the same problem , the client got their linux basic hosting. and i saw the htacess file kept throwing 500 error im using drupal 7. i contacted easily.co.uk and got a reply!

Here is what they sent:
I have fixed the 500 error and in order to fix the error I had to comment out Options +FollowSymLinks in the .htaccess file. Due to security reason server does not allow that option to be used.

Nice of them to change the file :) So all you need to do is put a hash (#) i think in front of +FollowSymLinks
Drupal so far seem to be working okay.

I think the downfall is i cannot use token or pathauto , things to make nice urls if anyone knows what removing +FollowSymLinks could you tell me Thanks!

Hope this helps some out there