how to prevent reading of xml file from browser under a particular directory on FC5

[Michael A Peters]

On Sat, 2007-02-10 at 18:16 +0530, ankush grover wrote:
> hi friends,
> 
>  I have configured a HelpDesk Ticketing System on Fedora Core 5. The
> problem I am facing is that there is a file called "site.xml" which
> contains the information about database connections and I don't want
> ppl to be able to read that file through browser. As per the
> readme.htm of that software if the below entries will be put
> in .htaccess then nobody can read the xml through browser.
> 
> <Files ~ ".xml">
>   Order allow,deny
>   Deny from all
>   Satisfy All
> </Files>
> 
> 
> Even though the above entries are there in .htaccess still I am able
> to read "site.xml" file. How do I prevent the reading of this file ?

First I would suggest fixing the broken web app so that connection
information such as you file does not need to be stored in a directory
that is served by apache.

If you can't do that, are you sure your apache is configured to respect
a .htaccess file?

You might also want to change the order to deny,allow
It's been awhile since I did anything with apache, but check the logs to
see if there are any errors parsing the .htaccess file.

Can you change the name of the xml file to .site.xml ?
If I recall, apache doesn't serve files that start with a .