Bug#296493: apache2ctl -t should warn about non-initial #

[Kevin Bullock <kbullock@umn.edu>]

Package: apache2
Severity: wishlist

I wanted to modify the default DirectoryIndex line in apache2.conf, so I
attempted to comment out just the last couple entries:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.shtml index.cgi index.pl #index.php index.xhtml

This is an error, because apparently the config file doesn't expect to have
comments in the middle of lines. This causes the internal request recursion
limit to be hit when trying to access any directory without an explicit index
file, and thus the user sees "500 Internal Server Error." The ErrorLog reports
the following:

[Tue Feb 22 00:25:22 2005] [error] [client 202.133.207.69] Request exceeded the 
limit of 10 subrequest nesting levels due to probable confguration error. Use 'L
imitInternalRecursion' to increase the limit if necessary. Use 'LogLevel debug' 
to get a backtrace.

This error, of course, has nothing to do with the actual problem. I therefore
suggest that 'apache2ctl -t' warn the user about the mid-line comment which
could be an error.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-10-amd64-k8
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)