DocumentRoot in .htaccess is causing an error

Question

I have DocumentRoot /var/www/test in my .htaccess file. This is causing the apache server to give me a 500 internal server error.

The error log file shows: alert] [client 127.0.0.1] /var/www/.htaccess: DocumentRoot not allowed here

AllowOveride All is set in my conf file.

Any idea why this is happening?

Answer 1

The DocumentRoot directive cannot appear in a .htaccess file. Put it in httpd.conf instead.

Answer 2

DocumentRoot should be set in your VirtualHost directive, not your .htaccess file.

Any specific reason you put DocumentRoot in your .htaccess file?

Answer 3

You don't mention your apache version , but docs for 2.0 say that DocumentRoot is only valid for virtualhost or server config. Acording to the docs it should not be used in a .htacces

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#documentroot