.htaccess: RewriteEngine not allowed here - .htaccess

Question

I uploaded the .htaccess to the server and received an Error 500 (Internal Server Error).
And in the error log I had the following error:
.../.htaccess: RewriteEngine not allowed here
But mod_rewrite.so is enabled.
So, do I need to change
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
to
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
in the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file?
Or could it be something else? The .htaccess file should be okay, because it works perfectly fine on my localhost. I just don't want to screw anything up.
Here's part of my .htaccess file:
Options All -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

Answer 1

minimum configuration for your .htaccess to work:
AllowOverride FileInfo Options
allowing all configuration will work as well:
AllowOverride All

Answer 2

Let's say your DOCUMENT_ROOT is /home/foo/web then have this config in your httpd.conf file:
<Directory "/home/foo/web">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
This should take care of RewriteEngine is not allowed error you're getting.

Answer 3

Just an idea, this happened to me, and I've lost a lot of time trying to solve it.
If you have a directory like d:/web/my-sites/some-site/
And you place the .htaccess on d:/web/my-sites/some-site/.htaccess (where it supposed to be).
If you have ANY .htaccess files before this directory, Apache reads that files, and blocks the execution of the entire path, producing an internal server error.
I.E.: You have d:/web/my-sites/.htaccess

Answer 4

In httpd version 2.4 (2.4.3 and 2.4.4), take a look at /etc/httpd/conf.d/wordpress.conf
There is one entry for:
....
Change:
"AllowOverride Options"
to
"AllowOverride All"
in wordpress.conf also in addition to changing httpd.conf. Restart the http server before the changes will take effect.

Answer 5

Also, just make sure you are editing the correct config file. I had created a file under /etc/apache2/users/USERNAME.conf but was editing /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.
Removing the USERNAME.conf file worked.

Answer 6

Try to change username.conf file on Mac under /etc/apache2/users/username.conf to
<Directory "/Users/akyoo/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Require all granted
</Directory>
My .htaccess file looks like this
#Allow from all
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|resources|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]
This works fine for me.
Solution for Ubuntu users

Answer 7

I was getting this type of error from the Google Cloud instance after checking the logs from the /var/log/apache2/error.log
.htaccess: RewriteEngine not allowed here
To get rid of the above error & 500 Internal Server Error, follow these simple steps
sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Then add these snippets of lines
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
After you’ve made that change, make sure to restart the server:
sudo service apache2 restart
This worked for me in getting rid of 500 Internal Server Error hosted on Google Cloud instance

Answer 8

you could use something like this in your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|html|test)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
this code simply means, that anything not pointing to index.php or html or test should be directed to index.php!
Hope this is helpful!