I know this will turn out to be something really stoopid, but I can't find it. Everything was great until I upgraded to OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) and the supplied Apache 2.2.13. I've replaced all the httpd conf files with my own that were previously working just fine. Everything is great except for one thing: Apache returns a 404 error for any requests to /assets/*. If I rename the directory from 'assets' to anything else, it works fine. I'm going crazy trying to find out why it's sensitive to the string 'assets'. I have no .htaccess files. All permissions have been checked. I've scoured all conf files (including vhosts) for what might cause this and haven't found it. Is there any reason why Apache would treat 'assets' different from anything else? Is there anywhere to check other than conf and .htaccess files?