Fix weird problem with Apache default encoding
(AddDefaultCharset) not taking effect on FreeBSD with Apache
version (2.0.63)
I encountered a weird problems a couple of minutes before. I tried
to put some text files written in UTF-8 which contain cyrillic in
the file names as well as the content the files has in my Apache
directory listing. Trying that produced a lot of "alien symbols"
for both file names and file content.
I have to admit that wasn't exactly what I expected. I've checked
my
/usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf just to find out I
already have the:
AddDefaultCharset utf-8
within in the configuration, I thought that somehow Apache could
have difficulties applying that rules for the custom Virtualhost
and therefore give the directive a try locally in the VirtualHost.
Grievously that didn't produced any positive result. That's why I
decided to check if somebody has experienced the same weird
behavior and I stumbled on
this wondeful blog post .
In short on the plug and pray's blog ... Wait and moment plug and
pray? Yes you read that correctly it's plug and pray :), on that
blog it's explained that newer versions of Apache 2.2.4 as this is
the version the blogger talks about as well as the latest Apache
release has an issue with
AddDefaultCharset not
working anymore. Fortunately the issue with the
AddDefaultCharset not taking effect in Apache no more is easily
solved. All that needs to be done is including the:
IndexOptions Charset=UTF-8
Within Apache conf file. In my case on FreeBSD I had to include
that in
/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf after which all
worked perfectly fine and I can see all my cyrillic symbols showing
anew.