apache RewriteRule redirect a page to root not working

Question

I'm struggeling with a very simple apache rewrite rule for hours. It must be so obvious that I can't see it anymore.

As input, I enter in the browser:

http://enseignement2.be/deployment.html

I try to have this page being displayed:

http://enseignement2.be/hello.html

So, I added that rule in the apache conf file:

RewriteRule ^deployment\.html$ hello.html [L,NC,QSA,R=301]

... and many other variants actually. As a result, it displays the deployment.html page. The browser's URL remains unchanged.

This is my complete configuration file, enseignement2.conf in /etc/httpd/conf.d/

 <VirtualHost 68.169.61.167:80>
     ServerName enseignement2.be
     DocumentRoot /var/www/hagakure/data/www/
     SuexecUserGroup hagakure hagakure
     CustomLog /var/www/httpd-logs/enseignement2.be.access.log combined
     ErrorLog /var/www/httpd-logs/enseignement2.be.error.log
     ServerAlias *.enseignement2.be www.enseignement2.be
     AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
 # enable expirations
     ExpiresActive On
 # expire GIF,JPEG,PNG images after a month in the client's cache
   ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
   ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
   ExpiresByType image/png A2592000

   ExpiresByType application/javascript A2592000
   ExpiresByType text/css A2592000

   RewriteEngine on
 #       RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)\.enseignement(2|deux)\.be [NC] # only if there is something (at lease 1 char) before the first dot. example: toto.enseignement2.be
 #       RewriteRule     ^(.*)?$ http://enseignement2.be$1 [redirect=301,nocase]
         RewriteRule ^deployment\.html$ hello.html [L,NC,QSA,R=301]

 # Directives for eApps applications dependent on Apache
    ProxyPass /deployment.html !
    ProxyPass /deployment.jpg !
    ProxyPass /hello.html !
    ProxyPass /manager/ispmgr !
    ProxyPass /manimg !
    ProxyPass /mancgi !
    ProxyPass /webmail !
    ProxyPass /joomla !
    ProxyPass /awstats !
    ProxyPass /myadmin !
 # Directives for your application
    ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8009/
    ProxyPassReverse / ajp://localhost:8009/
 </VirtualHost>

The ProxyPass are taken into account, because if I comment the line ProxyPass /deployment.html !, the page does not display anymore (the request is transferred to the tomcat 7 instance behind apache.

It runs on CentOS 6, with Apache/2.2.22 Any suggestion is welcome guys, thanks!

Answer 1

In server/vhost config, you need a leading slash in your regex:

RewriteRule ^/deployment\.html$ hello.html [L,NC,QSA,R=301]