How to Enable Mod_Rewrite in Apache?

To enable it the rewrite module, run "apache2 enable module rewrite":

sudo a2enmod rewrite

You need to restart the webserver to apply the changes:

sudo service apache2 restart

If you plan on using mod_rewrite in .htaccess files, you also need to enable the use of .htaccess files by changing AllowOverride None to AllowOverride FileInfo. For the default website, edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default:

    <Directory /var/www/>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
            # changed from None to FileInfo
            AllowOverride FileInfo
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all
    </Directory>

After such a change, you need to restart Apache again.

• Apache documentation on AllowOverride
• Manual page of a2enmod

I dare to add a special answer (as a followup to the great answer above) regarding ubuntu 14.04 and .htaccess :

In 14.04, the name of the default configuration file is changed to 000-default.conf :

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

add the following to the end of the file :

<Directory "/var/www/html">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>

For some reason, in Ubuntu 14.04 and apache2 the root is set to /www/html. If you want to change the webserver root back to good old /www, open 000-default.conf and change

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/

to

DocumentRoot /var/www/

and then off course it should be

<Directory "/var/www">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>