Restricted set of directives in .htaccess

[Mohamed_E]

Today I created a subdirectory on my web site, where I have no control other than through .htaccess. I did not want to have an index.html file, but I wanted people to be able to go to my.site.com/my-directory and get somefile.html.

The obvious solution seemed to be "DirectoryIndex somefile.html" but when I uploaded a .htaccess file with nothing but that line I got a 500 error with either my.site.com/my-directory or my.site.com/my-directory/somefile.html.

Am I right in assuming that the server admin has restricted the directives I can use in my .htaccess? Is that common?

The solution turned out to be simple, I put a "RedirectPermanent index.html somefile.html" :)

[wkitty42]

it is possible... if it is an apache v1.3.* server, see [httpd.apache.org ] to be sure... it is a common thing to do to prevent hosted users from being able to do some not so nice things or to figure out more about the server installation then they need to know to serve their pages... using the above url, drop back to /docs/ for all the documentation... everything is covered...