Attempts to use .htaccess file to block IP addresses brings down site

.htaccess file preventing access to my site completely

[hermosa]

I used the .htaccess generator tool. This is what was generated:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xx
Deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xx
Deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xx

Uploaded the file and it took my entire site off-line

What am I doing wrong? Other than that, the file is empty.

[edited by: phranque at 2:29 am (utc) on Oct 4, 2017]
[edit reason] fixed typo [/edit]

[keyplyr]

What am I do wrong?

Well since you didn't identify who is "allowed" then that's why your site crashed... (that and the regex is broke.)

Try adding

Allow from all

[phranque]

when all else fails check your server error log file.

[lucy24]

Well since you didn't identify who is "allowed" then that's why your site crashed...

I'm not so sure. I fiddled around on my test site and the server doesn't seem to give a squat if an Allow and/or Deny line is omitted. After all, the whole point of the "Order" directive is that it determines what happens when a request matches either both ("Allow from 11.22.33" and "Deny from 11.22.33" in the same scope) or neither.

Now, the server will throw a fit if the IP given in
Deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xx
happens to be invalid--for example if one of the segments is > 255. (It doesn't seem to care about trailing spaces in this specific context, though it may well cause disaster elsewhere.)

[tangor]

Did the generator tool keep all OTHER directives in the working htaccess or delete them?

[keyplyr]

@tangor - OP had said there is nothing else in the htaccess file, but that got edited.

@lucy24 - even though Apache will tolerate some incomplete regex directives, the config may not. We know nothing about the server set-up hermosa has the account at. Maybe he needed a wrapper?

[tangor]

If there's nothing in .htaccess there should be no .htaccess at all. Valid question if a generator tool made changes that changed something else. If a CMS is involved pretty sure there's OTHER things in .htaccess. ... the "but that got edited:" means what? Typo, or .... what?

[lucy24]

some incomplete regex directives

Was something edited out of the initial post before I saw it? I see neither a Regular Expression nor a wrapper. The argument in a Deny or Allow line isn't a regex, the way it would be in mod_setenvif.

If your htaccess contains only one line, that one line might well be

Options -Indexes

to override a server-wide setting for auto-indexing (common in shared hosting).

[keyplyr]

@tangor/lucy - No, none of that