alioth.debian.org / blends.debian.net: different behaviour of Option MultiViews

[Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de>]

Hi,

probably this is off topic here - so I beg your pardon for missusing this list
but I had no idea where else I could get quick help.  The problem: Apache2 
configuration on alioth.debian.org does not support MultiView option to enable
different languages of website.  So the solution was to use a .htaccess file
like this:

Options +MultiViews
AddLanguage fr .fr
AddLanguage en .en
AddLanguage nl .nl
...

which worked perfectly.  I've got a dedicated box sponsored for Debian Med
and I wanted to run a test version for new developments of the Blends tasks
pages there and thus I want to use perfectly the same code and resulting
files.  I have set up a virtual host

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ cat /etc/apache2/conf.d/90_v_blends.conf
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

LogFormat "%V:#:%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\"" confixx

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName  blends.debian.net
ServerAlias  blends.debian.net *.blends.debian.net
DocumentRoot /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/blends/htdocs

ErrorLog   /srv/blends.debian.net/log/error.log
CustomLog  /srv/blends.debian.net/log/access.log common

# To get negotiation working
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    # AllowOverride Options -> enable options in .htaccess files
    AllowOverride AuthConfig Limit FileInfo Options
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

</IfModule>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately this has not the desired effect because I get log entries like

... [alert] ... /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/blends/htdocs/science/tasks/.htaccess: Option MultiViews not allowed here

When Googling for this error string the advise was always to anable Multiviews
in the apache configuration (as I did above) and if I actually remove the 
"Options +MultiViews" line from the .htaccess file everything works fine -
but as I said I wanted to use the same .htaccess file on alioth as on
blends.debian.net.  So this solution is no option.

I tried to read about this in the apache docs[1] and found:

   Multiviews

   MultiViews is a per-directory option, meaning it can be set with an Options directive
   within a <Directory>, <Location> or <Files> section in httpd.conf, or (if AllowOverride
   is properly set) in .htaccess files. Note that Options All does not set MultiViews; you
   have to ask for it by name.

I tried to set AllowOverride "properly" (whatever this finally means) and
enabled "Options" as you can see above.  (Before I did so there was a different
error message indicating this solution.)  But now I wonder what kind of configuration
is *really* needed to make it effectively working as on the Gforge virtual hosts
on alioth to reach the same effect as I get at blends.alioth.debian.org?

Any hint?

Kind regards

          Andreas.

[1] http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/content-negotiation.html

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