I can't get this to work at all, and it was last week...

Just an update,

I installed this module on our other drupal site (same server...same apache/sql) and it works. However, it downloads all files, even images, instead of displaying them in the browser. And I know it's module related and not apache because I can go to a misc image folders (not private) and they are displayed just fine in the browser.

I looked into the module at the headers area and I see nothing wrong... It even has the max-age set which was not present in the tutorials I used last week.

$header = array(
      'Content-Type: '. file_get_mimetype($filepath),
      'Content-Length: '. filesize(file_create_path($filepath)),
      'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'. mime_header_encode(basename($filepath)) .'"'
    );
    // additional user-defined file header attributes (if any)
    return array_merge($header, explode("\n", variable_get('private_download_header', "Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\nCache-Control: max-age=60, must-revalidate")));

Edit: I switched the content-dispo to inline and it works. And that's fine because everything we are serving we want that way.

The main .htaccess file for the site that isn't working...

# Apache/PHP/Drupal - The Daily Reporter (03/22/2012)

# Protect files & directories
<FilesMatch "\.(engine|inc|info|install|make|module|profile|test|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(\.php)?|xtmpl|svn-base)$|^(code-style\.pl|Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template|all-wcprops|entries|format)$">
  Order allow,deny
</FilesMatch>

# Force the latest IE or use Chromeframe
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    BrowserMatch MSIE ie
    Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge,chrome=1" env=ie
  </IfModule>
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header append Vary User-Agent
</IfModule>

# Cross domain webfonts
<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|woff|font.css)$">
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
  </IfModule>
</FilesMatch>

# Video
AddType video/ogg  ogg ogv
AddType video/mp4  mp4
AddType video/webm webm

# Proper SVG serving
AddType     image/svg+xml             svg svgz 
AddEncoding gzip                      svgz

# Webfonts
AddType application/vnd.ms-fontobject eot
AddType font/truetype                 ttf
AddType font/opentype                 otf
AddType font/woff                     woff
AddType text/cache-manifest           manifest
AddType text/x-component              htc

# Index & Directory Options
Options -Indexes
#Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Options +FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex index.php
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

# Force simple error message for requests for non-existent favicon.ico.
<Files favicon.ico>
  ErrorDocument 404 "The requested file favicon.ico was not found.
</Files>

# PHP 4, Apache 1.
<IfModule mod_php4.c>
  php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
  php_value register_globals                0
  php_value session.auto_start              0
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_value mbstring.encoding_translation   0
  php_value memory_limit                    96M
  php_value post_max_size                   32M
  php_value upload_max_filesize             32M
  php_value max_input_time                  180  
</IfModule>

# PHP 4, Apache 2.
<IfModule sapi_apache2.c>
  php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
  php_value register_globals                0
  php_value session.auto_start              0
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_value mbstring.encoding_translation   0
  php_value memory_limit                    25M
  php_value post_max_size                   32M
  php_value upload_max_filesize             32M
  php_value max_input_time                  180
</IfModule>

# PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2.
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
  php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
  php_value register_globals                0
  php_value session.auto_start              0
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_value mbstring.encoding_translation   0
  php_value memory_limit                    512M
  php_value post_max_size                   32M
  php_value upload_max_filesize             32M
  php_value max_input_time                  180
</IfModule>

# Gzip compression.
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

# html, txt, css, js, json, xml, htc:
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css text/javascript application/javascript application/json
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component

# Webfonts & SVG
  <FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|svg)$" >
    SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
  </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled. Set caching to 2 weeks after access.
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresDefault A1209600
  <FilesMatch \.php$>
    ExpiresActive Off
  </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

# Various rewrite rules.

<Files *.js.gz>
  AddEncoding gzip .js
  ForceType application/x-javascript
</Files>

<Files *.css.gz>
  AddEncoding gzip .css
  ForceType text/css
</Files>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

  RewriteEngine on

  # Force WWW
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thedailyreporteronline\.com$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.thedailyreporteronline.com/$1 [L,R=301]
  
  # Set base URL
  RewriteBase /
  
  # Clean URLs
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
  
  # Custom Gzip for AGG CSS & JS
  RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -f
  RewriteRule ^(.*)\.css $1.css.gz [L,QSA]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -f
  RewriteRule ^(.*)\.js $1.js.gz [L,QSA]
  
</IfModule>

# Without -MultiViews, Apache will give a 404 for a rewrite if a folder of the same name does not exist.
Options -MultiViews 

# Use utf-8 encoding for anything served text/plain or text/html.
AddDefaultCharset utf-8

# Force utf-8 for a number of file formats.
AddCharset utf-8 .html .css .js .xml .json .rss

# We don't need to tell everyone we're apache.
ServerSignature Off

# $Id: .htaccess,v 1.90.2.5 2010/02/02 07:25:22 dries Exp $

Because my .htaccess file for the main site is rather customized, and the site that private download is working on isn't, I switched them to see what happens. Still nothing. Rewrites work but all I get is 'Access Denied' errors, even with the super user.

Flushed all caches, rebuilt all permissions, rebooted apache, flushed browsers, tried 5 diff browsers, nothing.

Well I figured this out after 2+ solid days of hair pulling and teeth grinding.

One word, CKEditor. That's right, I have no idea what it was doing but I turned it off and it worked. Actually, it even fixed what wasn't working last week.

All I did was update to the newest CKeditor (which just came out) and everything is fine.

Chad