mod_rewrite in vhosts configuration

Question

I'm trying to add mod_rewrite rules in the vhost config but it's not working. For the site "mysite.com" I want to redirect "/webmedia/" to the home page .

Here is what I have:

<VirtualHost 192.168.100.142:80>
    ServerAdmin serveradmin@bbgi.com
    DocumentRoot /home/drupal_1
    ServerName mysite.com
    ServerAlias www.mysite.com
    Alias /movies /home/movies/
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/mysite.com_err_log
      CustomLog /var/log/httpd/mysite.com_log special
    <Directory /home/drupal_1>
      Options FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
              AllowOverride All
              DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php

      # Rewrite Rules #####################
      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteRule ^/webmedia/(.*) / [R=301,L]
      # end Rewrite Rules #################

    </Directory>
    <Directory /home/movies>
      Options FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
              AllowOverride All
              DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

This should work if you have mod_rewrite loaded.

<Directory /home/drupal_1>
    Options FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
    AllowOverride All
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php
</Directory>
<Directory /home/movies>
    Options FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
    AllowOverride All
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php
</Directory>
<VirtualHost 192.168.100.142:80>
    ServerAdmin serveradmin@bbgi.com
    DocumentRoot /home/drupal_1
    ServerName mysite.com
    ServerAlias www.mysite.com
    Alias /movies /home/movies/
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/mysite.com_err_log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/mysite.com_log special

    # Rewrite Rules #####################
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule ^/webmedia/(.*) / [R=301,L]
    # end Rewrite Rules #################   
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

<Directory /home/drupal_1>
  Options FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
          AllowOverride All
          DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php

  # Rewrite Rules #####################
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^/webmedia/(.*) / [R=301,L]
  # end Rewrite Rules #################
</Directory>

This RewriteRule pattern would never match in a directory context (ie. inside a <Directory> container) because of the slash prefix. It would have needed to have been written like this:

RewriteRule ^webmedia/ / [R=301,L]

(The trailing (.*) was superfluous.)

However, since it's in a <Directory> container, any mod_rewrite directives that you have in .htaccess (since you have AllowOverride All) could potentially override this.

If you are using .htaccess and this is undesirable then probably better to take it out of the <Directory> container and have it directly in the <VirtualHost> container (a virtualhost context) - as @Seybsen has done in his answer.