.htaccess issues: No input file specified - php

Question

Can someone help me with this? I'm feeling like I've been hitting my head against a wall for over 2 hrs now.
I've got Apache 2.2.8 + PHP 5.2.6 installed on my machine and the .htaccess with the code below works fine, no errors.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|css|gfx|js|swf|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
The same code on my hosting provider server gives me a 404 error code and outputs only: No input file specified. index.php is there. I know they have Apache installed (cannot find version info anywhere) and they're running PHP v5.2.8.
I'm on Windows XP 64-bit, they're running some Linux with PHP in CGI/FastCGI mode. Can anyone suggest what could be the problem?
PS. if that's important that's for CodeIgniter to work with friendly URLs.
Update1:
mod_rewrite is installed and on.
What I've noticed is that if I change in RewriteRule to /index.php?$1 (question mark instead of forward slash) it goes into an infinite loop. Anyway, using question mark isn't an option as CodeIgniter (required) is not going to work this way.
Homepage also works when I request index.php directly: example.com/index.php
I'm starting to think it might be apache thinking that once the trailing slash is added it is not a file anymore but a folder. how to change such a behaviour?
Update 2:
I was wrong.
Apache handles these URLs correctly.
Requesting http://example.com/index.php/start/ (homepage) or any other valid address works.
Seems that Apache is just not forwarding the query for some reason.
Update 3:
Just to be clear what I'm trying to achieve.
I want to rewrite addresses like that:
http://www.example.com/something/ => http://www.example.com/index.php/something/
http://www.example.com/something/else/ => http://www.example.com/index.php/something/else/

Answer 1

I was beating my head up against this as well. I'm also installing Code Igniter.
The goocher was no RewriteBase. Here's my .htaccess:
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

Answer 2

The Problem
I encountered a similar problem just now and unfortunately none of the answers in this thread helped:
Zend Framework was giving out "No input file specified.", but:
The default RewriteBase was just fine, and adding RewriteBase / did not help
It's a shared hosting server and only FastCGI is available (no ability to switch to SuPHP)
AcceptPathInfo was on
There was no problem with URL rewriting in general on the server
So the answer came from the following site:
https://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/55620/P15 [dead link]
(even though the host is not DreamHost).
The Solution
Apparently all you need to do is replace this line:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1
With this:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1
Problem solved.

Answer 3

This worked for me:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
After index.php, the question mark is important!

Answer 4

Try if it works with a simpler RewriteCond; like one that rewrites only everything that isn't an existing file/folder/link:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [R,L]

Answer 5

Go Daddy Users:
login to your Go Daddy Account
click on your hosting account.
go to Settings > File Extensions Management
change .php and .php5 to run under PHP5.2X (instead of PHP5.2xFastCGI)
SOLVED!!!!

Answer 6

mod_rewrite is a bit too smart for its own good, because it tries to figure out what sort of redirect it should be doing. In this case it looks to mod_rewrite like you're trying to redirect to a folder, so it looks for the folder and can't find it, hence the error.
Edit: Just to be perfectly clear I think your best bet is to change your rewrite rule to:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?$1 [L]
unless there is a very speciic reason why you want it to be a forward slash.
Edit 2: I see that you already tried this. The reason you're getting an infinite loop is because you have index.php in your rewrite condition. If you remove that you should be free of the infinite loop.

Answer 7

this code will fixed this issue.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Answer 8

.htaccess for Live Server :-
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
.htaccess for Localhost :-
RewriteEngine On
#RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php/$1

Answer 9

It is very likely that the administrator of your host has disabled the ability to use Rewrite in .htaccess. They might not even have mod_rewrite installed.
Drop them an email and ask
Since this is a server configuration issue, perhaps you should ask at Server Fault
Edit (since you are sure that the server is configured correctly)
Have you considered tagging your RewriteCond with an end of line $?
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|css|gfx|js|swf|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)
Will (based on my limited knowledge) block any url that contains index.php, css, gfx ... at the start of a url. Because you don't have a $ at the end of the regexp, it will also block any urls that continue on from there...
I.e www.yourdomain.com/index.php/something is not redirected, same with www.yourdomain.com/js/something
Perhaps you want to add a $, which will require the url to end immediately after your regexp.
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|css|gfx|js|swf|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)$

Answer 10

Here is one time I caught no input file specified right on action:
This causes it:
RewriteRule ^(.*\.swf)$ redirect_php.php/?a=1 [last]
This corrected it:
RewriteRule ^(.*\.swf)$ redirect_php.php?a=1 [last]
note the / before query ?
This seems really related to AcceptPathInfo, which is about the ability to read paths after file names:
http://domain.com/file.php/tricky_path/?regular_query_stuff

Answer 11

Since this question seems to attract a lot of attention I'd like to propose another answer for people having encountering the same problem and are unable to solve it with the help of the existing answers. I myself was one of those people until five minutes ago.
Always, I mean always check your server logs because they might present useful information to you.
After checking my server logs (Apache2.4) I found out that open_basedir caused the trouble:
mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Warning: Unknown: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/data/sites/domain/public/index.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/bin:/data/sites/domain/http-docs) in Unknown on line 0
mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Warning: Unknown: failed to open stream: Operation not permitted in Unknown on line 0
In this case, open_basedir could not handle a symbolic link I created because it points to the outside of the open_basedir settings. Either broaden the open_basedir setting to also the new location or move the required files to the inside of any allowed directory..

Answer 12

You may be using Nginx, not an Apache. The error message will be the same.
echo out your sever data to be sure.
echo $_SERVER["SERVER_SOFTWARE"];

Answer 13

I spent hours trying all recipes from SO until I found the solution: you have to add question mark (?) after ".php", so last line of your rewrite rules will look like:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php ? /$1 [L]
There was no ? In my CodeIgniter setup from previous server, cause it usedpure Apache (no Nginx). And no recipes with port forwarding, nginx reconfiguration or php-fm reinstallation helped -- I tried them all on my VDS.
That simple method solved all in seconds.

Answer 14

In my case, the rewrite engine was conflicting with the doc_root directive in php.ini. The rewrite engine was treating the rewritten URL as a local file path and prefixing it with the document root, only to be prefixed again by PHP.
The solution was to rewrite to a relative URL, and add the PT flag. This tells mod_rewrite to pass the result to normal URL processing.
RewriteRule "^/(unwanted-part)/(.*)$" /$2 [PT]

Answer 15

In my case I am running laragon it's happening due to php.ini file, then I removed the php and install it again and it worked successfully. I think made some changes in php.ini file that's why it's displaying no input specific. After installing php.ini it fixed my issue.
update php.ini

Answer 16

Maybe your server has AcceptPathInfo disabled that is essential for that kind of URL to work properly. Try to enable it:
AcceptPathInfo On
Ok, try this rule:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule !^index\.php(/|$) index.php%{REQUEST_URI} [L]