Apache server ignores .htaccess

Question

I'm trying to get a website working on my test environment, but somehow it is not working. I can load the normal index page, but when I want to access /page/test it throws an error saying the page does not exists. My log says:

File does not exist: /home/page_url/www/page

Which is in fact true, but it should got to my Page controller instead and load the test method.

My .htaccess looks like:

# Turn on URL rewriting
RewriteEngine On

# Installation directory
RewriteBase /

# Protect hidden files from being viewed
<Files .*>
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny From All
</Files>

# Protect application and system files from being viewed
RewriteRule ^(?:application|modules|system)\b.* /$0 [L]

# Allow any files or directories that exist to be displayed directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

# Rewrite all other URLs to index.php/URL
RewriteRule .* index.php/$0 [PT]

My vhost configuration looks like:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName page_url
    Include /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/vhco.include
    DocumentRoot "/home/page_url/www/"

    # Logging
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_log common
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error_log

    # This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to.
    <Directory "/home/page_url/www/">
        # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",
        # or any combination of:
        #   Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews
        #
        # Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All"
        # doesn't give it to you.
        #
        # The Options directive is both complicated and important.  Please see
        # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options
        # for more information.
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

        # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
        # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
        #   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
        AllowOverride All

        # Controls who can get stuff from this server.
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from All 
    </Directory>

    <IfModule alias_module>
        # Redirect: Allows you to tell clients about documents that used to
        # exist in your server's namespace, but do not anymore. The client
        # will make a new request for the document at its new location.
        # Example:
        #   Redirect permanent /foo http://www.example.com/bar

        # Alias: Maps web paths into filesystem paths and is used to
        # access content that does not live under the DocumentRoot.
        # Example:
        #   Alias /webpath /full/filesystem/path
        #
        # If you include a trailing / on /webpath then the server will
        # require it to be present in the URL.  You will also likely
        # need to provide a <Directory> section to allow access to
        # the filesystem path.

        # ScriptAlias: This controls which directories contain server scripts.
        # ScriptAliases are essentially the same as Aliases, except that
        # documents in the target directory are treated as applications and
        # run by the server when requested rather than as documents sent to the
        # client.  The same rules about trailing "/" apply to ScriptAlias
        # directives as to Alias.
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/localhost/cgi-bin/"
    </IfModule>

    # "/var/www/localhost/cgi-bin" should be changed to whatever your ScriptAliased
    # CGI directory exists, if you have that configured.
    <Directory "/home/page_url/www/">
        AllowOverride None
        Options None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

I'm using Gentoo.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

<Directory "/home/page_url/www/">
    AllowOverride None

This AllowOverride None disables .htaccess files from being read. See the manual.

Also, please bear in mind that there's nothing magical about .htaccess files. They are a crude workaround for not having full access to the server configuration. All they are is a piece of Apache configuration. If you have full access to the server configuration, you should be putting stuff like this into the vhost configuration, not .htaccess files.

Answer 2

As Jim said, if you have full access to your server, you should just put everything in the server configuration files.

I reached here because I thought my server was ignoring my own htaccess/server configuration files. However, it turned out I had mod_expires and mod_rewrite disabled. After I had those two looked into, everything was working again as it should.

You can enable them by executing these commands:

sudo a2enmod expires
sudo a2enmod rewrite

Then restart apache

service apache2 restart

Hope this helps someone out there!

Answer 3

One thing to remember if your rewrite rules still don't work:

Also activate the ModRewrite module! It is not by default in Ubuntu.

See other answer here on how to do that.