CakePHP 2.4.3 URL-Rewriting module not working - php

Question

Ok...
Getting tired of this issue. So I thought I would ask here
Just to clarify I did follow the Cake PHP documentation on this. I did google this for almost 2 hours and guess what ... no luck
I did enable the mod-rewrite -> this took me a while as I dont have an httpd.conf file
I edited my htaccess file in webroot etc to include:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
As recommended by another poster on this site
No Luck. Am I missing something special here like a tad of mystical unicorn dust on my installation or am I being stupid?
Lemme know if you need something else
Oh I did a LAMP installation thing a while ago
Your guidance will be much appreciated :)
[edit] cahnged tags to 2.4 instead of 2.3 <-- My bad

Answer 1

If you had to enable mod_rewrite then chances are, your default apache setup will also need to be changed to allow the .htaccess to execute correctly. By default, most .htaccess rules in publicly accessible directories will be denied.
Depending on your setup you should have something like this ...
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
deny from all
</Directory>
Found in your config directory for a apache, which may be something like
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default
Note that the path above and also the /var/www/ path in your Directory tag above, may be different.
You will need to change a few things, such as AllowOveride and also a few others to match below. Inspect for the differences.
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
Once you have changed that, restart apache and hopefully you will see that the rules in your .htaccess file are now executing.

Answer 2

I think you're missing the /$1 part.
My .htaccess in webroot looks like this:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
I have also had issues in the past with rewrite and cakePHP on some servers, I needed to add a slash at the start of the filename, as shown:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [QSA,L]
however I don't think that this is your issue here.

Answer 3

/var/www/app/webroot/.htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
/var/www/app/.htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
/var/www/.htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
Please use these .htaccess files to configure you app