Case Sensitive Apache/Moodle

[CyberNerd]

I'm having issues with moodle and case-sensitive files on LAMP

I received "The National Strategies: Inclusion Development Programme Primary/Secondary" from the dfCSF.
The software is designed for staff inset. Although the software is a windows installer, it is (almost) perfect VLE material - lots of HTML with a few Flash exercises.

but in the infinite wisdom of the dfCSF they have coded it with a mix of uppercase and lowercase HTML, looking for uppercase and lowercase files.
They then claim it only works on XP. I can see why.

Is there a simple way of making apache case insensitive?

I tried a script that changes file/directorynames to lowercase, but it only partially solved the problem. Anyone fancy sharing something sed/perly that will change my href's to something lowercase?

[Jona]

If you host it under pure apache I suspect this is possible with either mod_spelling or mod_rewrite however if moodle is wrapping the hosting of it these may not work as well and/or may break other things....

Jona

Ninja edit: mod_spelling now seems to be known as mod_speling : http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_speling.html

[CyberNerd]

I tested it on a apache virtualhost which was running on the same server as the moodle, but it did the same, so I suspect it is more apache than moodle.

there is a lot of data on our moodle (we've had it for a few years now) and I'm sure that installing mod_rewrite won't work because there are so many files already uploaded, realistically I don't want to rename them all - it's bound to go pear shaped.

[User3204]

...mod_spelling now seems to be known as mod_speling...

Apache are taking the p*** aren't they ?
Trying to be clevar..

[CyberNerd]

I just found this excellent post. I think I'll try an butcher a script....

Re: WC:>: changing anchor filenames to lowercase

perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html

which says:


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^^^^^
for every file in this directory whose extension is '.html',


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^^^^
create a backup copy (with the extension '.bak'), then write the output of
this command back into the original file. the official term for this is
"in-place editing", hence the 'i'.


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^
loop through the file one line at a time, printing the results of the
command (technically, the contents of the "$_" internal variable) before
going on to the next line.


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^
decide what to print (and thus write back into the file) by executing the
string which follows. and that string says:


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^
perform a substitution


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^
for every occurrence of a matching string (not just the first, as is the
default), which makes this a 'global' search & replace function.


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^
ignore case when looking for items that match the target pattern.


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^^^^^
the pattern we're looking for starts with the string 'href="'


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^
followed by any number of characters, of any kind,


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^
up to the next '"' mark.


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^ ^
when you find a string of that type, remember it (store it in a temporary
variable named "$1")


perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html
^^^^
and replace it with a copy of itself, converted entirely to lowercase.

after running that, all your URLs should be converted to lowercase in the
original files, but the backups contain original versions of each file.
if something goes wrong, you can back up and start again. if the command
did what you wanted, you can delete all the backup files and be done with
it.

[CyberNerd]

I think this did it.
will test tomorrow

find ./ -iname "*.html" -exec perl -pi.bak -e 's/(href=".*?")/\L$1/ig;' *.html {} \;