Move updates.d.o to its own webroot

The way it currently works on d.o is there's a "release-history" directory in the document root with a symlink to the real project-release-server-history.php file, and the following .htaccess:

DirectoryIndex project-release-serve-history.php
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ project-release-serve-history.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

The idea is to put this logic directly into the root .htaccess file and don't bother with the release-history subdir at all. However, I don't understand mod_rewrite voodoo enough to make this work. ;) This isn't working on my test site:

# Handle requests for usage data
RewriteRule ^/release-history/(.*)$ sites/all/modules/project/release/project-release-serve-history.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

the .htaccess is clearly being used, and rewriting works, but when I try to visit:

[site]/release-history/drupal

I just get a 403:

"You don't have permission to access /release-history/drupal on this server."

Help? ;)

After further consideration in IRC, we decide it was better still to move updates.d.o into its own webroot. This avoids the release-history subdir hack from d.o's webroot entirely, and solves the problem of google indexing, etc, since updates.d.o will no longer be a full-blown copy of d.o, but its very own site. So, we're going to set all this up right now and test it, so we can have this as a separate site before the d.o upgrade itself tomorrow morning.

https://svn.drupal.org/drupal/updates.drupal.org/trunk now contains everything we need for this site. I've checked that out to /var/www/updates.drupal.org/htdocs on www1. If anyone else wants to test, here's how:

1) Put this in /etc/hosts:

140.211.166.6   updates2.drupal.org

2) Put this in settings.php:

$conf['update_fetch_url'] = 'http://updates2.drupal.org/release-history';

Currently, updates2.d.o is pointing to /var/www/updates.drupal.org/htdocs for its webroot.

Personally, I think we're ready to pull the trigger to change the webroot for updates.d.o itself, but I'd be happy to hear someone else tried to break it and couldn't. ;)

Thanks!
-Derek

Note: if you're testing on D5, you want this in settings.php instead:

$conf['update_status_fetch_url'] = 'http://updates2.drupal.org/release-history';

(and you still need to tweak your copy of /etc/hosts)

This is now live.

That bug's actually separate from this move -- it's due to the D6 port.
See #376550: Available Updates Links Broken about fixing this.