Forum Moderators: phranque
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This probably has to do with the order that Apache executes modules. If the module that handles jsp is executed before mod_rewrite, then mod_rewrite cannot affect the processing of jsp files.
This often happens on Apache 1.3 when people add PHP to their server. If they add PHP into the LoadModule list in the wrong place, then mod_rewrite won't rewrite PHP URLs.
Apache 2 introduces the concept of "module priority" to overcome such problems, but I'm not a jsp or Apache 2 user, so maybe someone else can give you more details.
Jim