Directory level .htaccess mod_rewrite stops vhost rewrites

The following directive in my vhost file works fine when there is no .htaccess file. But, when I introduce one it stops working. How do I get the vhost rewrites to execute when the htaccess rewrite is not-matched?

From vhost.conf:

# Skip everything except html and json
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \..+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(html|json)$
RewriteRule .* - [L]
# If html exists (is cached)
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
# Otherwise pass it on the index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

From /test/.htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} old_directory/.*$
RewriteRule (.*)$ old_missing.phtml [PT]

Requests for /test/hello.json...

...without .htaccess: is routed to index.php and returns the correct json.

...with .htaccess: returns a 404 Not Found

Requests for /text/old_hello.phtml...

...without .htaccess: returns a 404 Not Found

...with .htaccess: returns the contents of old_missing.phtml

Also, I tailed my rewrite log and it looks like it's doing what it should with the .htaccess rules (trip per-dir prefix, applying pattern, RewriteCond => not-matched, and pass through), but then it just stops.

For those who are inclined to ask "Why are you doing this?" there are two reasons 1) I'm getting paid and 2) we are migrating some ajax .phtml requests to a new ajax .json system so we need to pass back a message if the user is requesting files from the old_directory开发者_开发问答 to first inform them of the changes. Thanks.

You need to add the following line into ALL your .htaccess files where you use Rewrite Rules:

RewriteOptions inherit

Apache documentation: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriteoptions