Apache server ignores .htaccess - php

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.

Answer 4

In my case the problem was the permissions for .htaccess file.
Solution:
sudo chown apache:apache .htaccess