Enabling pretty permalinks on Wordpress - apache configuration does not work - php

Question

Probably this error has a pretty easy solution but I've been looking way to long at this and still don't get the error. I think I've tried whatever I could.
Problem: when I enable pretty permalinks on my wordpress installation (so, that it is using /%postname%/), it doesn't work. I get a 404 on all pages except for the homepage.
This page http://codex.wordpress.org/Permalinks tells me the requirements for permalinks to work:
Apache web server with the mod_rewrite module installed
In WordPress's home directory,
The FollowSymLinks option enabled
FileInfo directives allowed (e.g. AllowOverride FileInfo or AllowOverride All)
An .htaccess file (if this file is missing, WordPress will try to create it when you activate "pretty" permalinks)
If you want WordPress to update the .htaccess file automatically, WordPress will need write access to the file.
Apache web server has been installed, the mod_rewrite module has been loaded with a2enmod rewrite command (and the server has been restarted multiple times after). So, under /etc/apache2/mods-enabled, the symlink to rewrite.load is present. Also, when I run phpinfo command, I see that the mod_rewrite module has been loaded. You can check this as well here: http://namorti.com/phpinfo.php
Then, in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled, there was no "default" present. I copied 000-default.conf to default and edited default afterwards. It contains the following:
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks Indexes
AllowOverride FileInfo
</Directory>
So as far as I'm concerned, FollowSymLinks has been enabled and FileInfo directives are allowed.
As for the last two points, in my wordpress home directory (/var/www), .htaccess is present and writeable by Wordpress (I updated the permalink structure a couple of times and it updates the .htaccess file accordingly). Right now it contains the following:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
So, as far as I know, it SHOULD be working. I restarted the server (service apache2 restart) several times. I don't see what I'm missing. Anyone has a clue here?
Thanks in advance!
* EDIT *
So, I did what calcinai told me to do... I edited my /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default file (containing the vhost). It now looks like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
# specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
#ServerName www.example.com
ServerAdmin www.namorti.com
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory /var/www>
Options MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</Directory>
# Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
# modules, e.g.
#LogLevel info ssl:warn
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
# For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
# after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>
# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet
I've restarted apache again, but unfortunately it still doesn't work. Honestly it would have surprised me, because moving the directives from the .htaccess file to the vhost would work if the htaccess on itself would work, as everything else seemed correct enough to me...
Any other suggestions? Thanks for the effort!

Answer 1

Make sure the AllowOverrides directive is set to all in the vhost - that's what tells apache to look for .htaccess files in the webroot.
A better solution is actually to put your rewrite directives in the vhost, as you clearly have write access to the file. When you have AllowOverrides on, apache will look in the directory and all parent directories for .htaccess files on every request, which can be a big performance hit.
For Wordpress, your vhost should look something like:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/site
<Directory /var/www/site>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

Solved it myself.
It had to do with the file "000-default.conf" - I copied it to "default" and edited "default", like I already mentioned in my question.
Apparently the service is using the file "000-default.conf" on itself. By copying the "default" file back to "000-default.conf" and restarting the apache service, everything works now.
One caveat: calcinai's suggestion seems like it should work, but with his suggestion in my vhost in the correct "000-default.conf" file, I got a 403 Forbidden error. When I replaced his content with my original content
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks Indexes
AllowOverride FileInfo
</Directory>
And then once again restarting the apache service, it all worked.
Thanks calcinai for your effort to try to help me :)

Answer 3

Permalink Problem
Inside of this file, we want to change all things.
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
000-default.conf
- should look something like this:
ServerAdmin webmaster#localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
<Directory /var/www/html/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
If you dont see like this then paste the above code inside virtual host
When you are finished, save and close the file.
Next, we need to enable the rewrite module, which allows you to modify URLs. You can do this by typing:
sudo a2enmod rewrite
After you have made these changes, restart Apache:
sudo service apache2 restart

Answer 4

This may help you solve this:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

Answer 5

After spending really lots of time, here is what worked successfully in my Linux machine's LAMP server. Following changes are needed for me to make it work perfectly,
Add this to your /etc/hosts file.
127.0.0.1 sitename.com
Add host entry as follows in the path /etc/apache2/sites-available/sitename.com.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster#localhost
ServerName sitename.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/sitename.com/public_html
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/sitename.com/public_html>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Create symlink to sites-enabled.
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/sitename.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/sitename.com.conf
Restart apache by using the command,
sudo service apache2 restart
This works perfectly for me. Instructions for adding host entry taken from, https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/wordpress-permalinks-not-working-on-ubuntu-14-04