Apache restart failing as it is not able to find a file which is present

Question

I have configured one of the web-instance configuration files with the below snippet to allow redirects to work through another file without the need to restart the server.

RewriteMap redirects txt:/mnt/var/www/html/abc/content/abc/na/ac/config_en_us/redirects/redirects.txt
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$
RewriteCond ${redirects:%1} >""
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ${redirects:%1} [R=301,NC,L]

When trying to restart the httpd after putting the code snippet i am not able to start the apache. The same code is working on other servers. Also the file was created and i have validated the permission.

below is the error statement

Syntax error on line 69 of /etc/httpd/conf.d/abc.conf: RewriteMap: file for map redirects not found:/mnt/var/www/html/abc/content/abc/na/ac/config_en_us/redirects/redirects.txt

I was finally able to bring the server up but the fix was not correct. Here is what i did.

I created the same file with the same name in a the path /etc/httpd/conf.d and then moved it to the required path, after which apache was able to find the file and did come up. Can anyone help me understand what happened.

Answer 1

Just to be definitive, this answer is per Fox's comment:

"the file itself needs read permission for the user Apache runs as, and every directory on the path to that file needs both read and execute permissions"

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Example. On CentOS, I had the file in /etc/http/conf/ and the paths were not set up as above. I moved it to /var/www/ (which had previously been configured properly) and it then worked.