.htaccess files are no longer working

Question

For some reason, .htaccess files have stopped working all of a sudden.

I checked apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_MODULES and rewrite_module is indeed loaded. However, putting random garbage in an .htaccess file is not causing any errors to show up in /var/log/apache2/error.log - so the file is not being read at all.

Where do I begin looking for potential causes?

I'm using Apache2 on Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit.

Answer 1

What is getting evaluated in .htaccess files is controlled by the AllowOverride Configuration directive.

You may check the Apache documentation here: Core - Apache HTTP Server