Where are mod alias rules stored?

There's a redirect at work but I can't find the directive!

[AlienSpoon]

Hi all,

This is my first post and I'm not really sure what details I should supply about my config, the context, etc, so please just ask and I'll post it.

I'm webmaster for a website hosted on an academic server, with ftp access only. The URL www.example.edu/foo/bar resolves nicely to the home page, and all URLs pointing to my www tree work accordingly (e.g. www.example.edu/foo/bar/dir1/somefile.php serves dir1/somefile.php).

So far so good, but if I add phpinfo() to dir1/somefile.php, the document root is said to be /var/www/, but the actual script name is /var/www/home_web/foo/web_bar/www/dir1/somefile.php
The URL displayed in the address bar when I go to that page is www.example.edu/foo/bar/dir1/somefile.php (as expected), so if there's some URL rewriting it seems it's done silently.

So my question is: how can this URL be mapped into that filename? The situation is very mysterious to me...

I've tried a couple of things, like call for help from IT -- useless answer, then no answer at all :/ -- or sneak around on the server directory, hoping to find an Alias or Rewrite directive relating to my site somewhere... I could pull the httpd.conf file but it was only here for backwards compatibility issues.
/etc/apache2/apache2.conf seemed more promising, but for mod_alias there was only this:

# Aliases: Add here as many aliases as you need (with no limit). The format is 
# Alias fakename realname
#
# Note that if you include a trailing / on fakename then the server will
# require it to be present in the URL. So "/icons" isn't aliased in this
# example, only "/icons/". If the fakename is slash-terminated, then the 
# realname must also be slash terminated, and if the fakename omits the 
# trailing slash, the realname must also omit it.
#
# We include the /icons/ alias for FancyIndexed directory listings. If
# you do not use FancyIndexing, you may comment this out.
#
#Alias /icons/ "/usr/share/apache2/icons/"

 Options Indexes MultiViews
 AllowOverride None
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all

And nothing for mod_rewrite.

All modules are loaded as DSOs (in /usr/lib/apache2/modules), but I can't find anything anywhere about the directory hosting my site! I've been pulling my hair for 2 days over this ghost rule, so I would very gladly welcome any help... Even (or maybe mostly) if I'm missing something totally obvious... >.<

Thanks!

[jdMorgan]

I would suspect that you're looking at an Alias configured in a config file to which you (stating you have ftp access only) do not have access to.

Note that MultiViews should be disabled unless you actually use content-negotiation. This has nothing to do with your problem, but may indeed have lots to do with "future problems." If it's not needed, turn it off. This module is either very, very useful or very troublesome... or sometimes both at the same time.

Jim