Hello, quick introduction so you understand what I’m dealing with:
I’m a second year college student in Belgium, mostly interested in webdesign. I have to create a php project (I do love php) and I had had the choice between using the school’s server (ftp) or my own server (ssh). So I chose mine. For this project, I would need an apache server, configured it, it works for what I want to do: local testing.
Now my problem (after an hour of google, I decided to take my chance and make a post here):
I have to use .htaccess for my project to rewrite the urls. Pretty basic stuff for you server guys probably. Now we got a script from school for the .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]
first problem I had was that the apache server didn’t recognize this file because I didn’t allow rewriting it. So I googled a bit, and changed my config:
location: /etc/apache2/sites-available/web
content:
<VirtualHost *:8080>
ServerAdmin Brent
ServerName **************
DocumentRoot /var/www/web
<Directory /var/www/web>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/www/web/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/accessregistrationpage.log combined
</Virtualhost>
the changes I made: I set AllowOverride All, in stead of AllowOverride None
I also noticed that in the default file, this directery was also listed there, also having the AllowOverride option. Now I changed this too in the first place, but after testing if it worked without it, I changed it back to AllowOverride None (while restarting the apache server between the changes)
This “worked”: in stead of getting an error “this URL does not exist” I got another one and now I’m pretty stuck:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, Brent and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2.20 (Ubuntu) Server at ******* Port 8080
I tested a few more things:
- clearing the .htaccess file I created in a sub directory of my web dir, fixes the problem, makes me think the issue is in my htaccess file (you see I study IT, right?
), I do need the htaccess though 
- chmod -R 755 . in my web dir, didn’t change anything
- I created a default .htaccess file in the web dir with no contents, didn’t change anything
So my guess, just out of the blue because I just read and copy/paste concering server configuration here, is that my apache server is out of date, and the .htaccess script we got from school uses some new stuff. However I have no idea if this is correct, I would test it but I have no clue how to update this server, because a friend installed it, like I mentioned, I’m not a server guy
Maybe some more relevant information:
- my server uses Ubuntu Server 11.10
- it’s Apache 2.2.20 (I think that because the 500 error sais that)
- I run my server on port 8080 because my provider doesn’t allow me to forward 80
- everything worked, except the htaccess, if I turn it off, or clear the file, it just works.
Thanks for your time, hope to receive an answer, but I’ll will be searching for one myself around the web too ofcourse.
Regards,
Brent (I had to use my IGN because someone already used my normal name here )