Content Encoding Error when trying to use GZip on Apache

Question

I'm trying to enable Gzip on my webserver and am not succeeding. By all means, I should have by now, I've done it before but success is eluding me.

I have this in my httpd.conf

 <Location "C:/Program Files (x86)/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/bt/web"> # Insert filter SetOutputFilter DEFLATE # Netscape 4.x has some problems... BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine # BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html # NOTE: Due to a bug in mod_setenvif up to Apache 2.0.48 # the above regex won't work. You can use the following # workaround to get the desired effect: BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html # Don't compress images SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \ \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary </Location>

And

 <IfModule mod_deflate.c> <FilesMatch "\.(js|css|html|htm)$"> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </FilesMatch> </IfModule> 

mod_deflate is enabled.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The first issue is that you have the element with a directory from the file system...

This is from the Apache manual:

When to use <Location>. Use <Location> to apply directives to content that lives outside the filesystem. For content that lives in the filesystem, use <Directory> and <Files>. An exception is <Location />, which is an easy way to apply a configuration to the entire server.

When I setup mod_deflate on Apache I use this setup:

# -------------------------------------------------------- # Deflate Module Configuration # -------------------------------------------------------- <IfModule deflate_module> # Set the location to webservers root <Location /> # Insert the filters SetOutputFilter DEFLATE # Netscape 4.x has some problems BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary # Make sure to never zip binaries (ie6 and chrome has issues with this.) SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|bz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary </Location> # Enable mod_deflate logging by uncommenting these lines #DeflateFilterNote Input instream #DeflateFilterNote Output outstream #DeflateFilterNote Ratio ratio #LogFormat '"%r" %{outstream}n/%{instream}n (%{ratio}n%%)' deflate #CustomLog logs/deflate_log deflate </IfModule>