1script - 4:53 pm on Jan 11, 2013 (gmt 0)

Lucy, "MAMP site"? As in LAMP but with an "M"? Mine are all LAMPs.

So, regarding the 2.2 thing: I have recently upgraded one server, and while I was looking for any sign of trouble right after the upgrade, I found this. Then I went back to all other servers I've upgraded to 2.2 since several months back, and ALL of them have the same problem (all cPanel installs, perhaps it matters here). None of the <File> or <FileMatch> directives work anymore.
I did some more digging and it turns out that these directives work in neither httpd.conf nor in respective sites' .htaccess 'es . Basically, the entire file name matching capability is gone!

This worked in 2.0 for sure but stopped in 2.2 I looked around the docs and it appears that mod_access is no longer used in 2.2 and is replaced by a slew of auth* modules and even though I seem to have all of them loaded, there's still something very basic that's missing.

I would have to say that my main concern is that non-working <File> and <Filematch> rules are the default, a very troublesome development.

@g1smd: RewriteRule still works, and this one does as well, but I would also call it an emergency because it would have to be done on each site hosted on this server individually - needless work because this is something I would always enable at the server level.