deny/allow all normal behavior

deny all

[ElectronMan]

I am using .htaccess to say "deny from all" to prevent access to all folders except for my media files. When I test it by typing in a direct address to the file in one of these folders, instead of getting a forbidden page, I get these responses from Firefox and IE7:

Firefox loads http://www.example.com/missing.php and says:

The page isn't redirecting properly
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
* This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. 

IE7 simply gets stuck in the "Waiting for http://www.example.com/..." phase forever.

What is wrong?

Here is my .htaccess file

# no outside access
deny from all

[edited by: jdMorgan at 2:29 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2007]
[edit reason] example.com [/edit]

[jdMorgan]

Do you have a custom 403 error page defined? If so, and if that page is denied by your code above, then you'll get into a loop trying to server that custom 403 error page.

Jim

[ElectronMan]

No, I don't have a custom error page. Do I need to have one in order to use deny from all?

[jdMorgan]

No.

And if you don't have a custom 403 error page, I don't know why you'd be getting a redirect in Firefox or a hang in IE.

You might want to install the "Live HTTP Headers" add-on for Firefox, and see what your server is responding with (repeatedly).

Jim