April 21, 2014
Chris
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50

How to enable mod_rewrite in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

A little note first: This is the most basic way to enable mod_rewrite. However, it’s not the best way. The more correct way would be to setup a vhost and change its config, but unless you are a professional and know exactly what you do this thing will do the job perfectly.

Please note that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS comes with Apache 2.4, while Ubuntu 12.04 LTS came with Apache 2.2. This new version introduced different default config filenames and in general some differences.

 

Activate the mod_rewrite module with

sudo a2enmod rewrite

and restart the apache

sudo service apache2 restart

To use mod_rewrite from within .htaccess files (which is a very common use case), edit the default VirtualHost with

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

Search for “DocumentRoot /var/www/html” and add the following lines directly below:

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

Save and exit the nano editor via CTRL-X, “y” and ENTER.

Restart the server again:

sudo service apache2 restart

Voila! To check if mod_rewrite is installed correctly, check your phpinfo() output. It should have this in it:

mod-rewrite-apache-2-4

This article was written quite a while ago (9 years), please keep this in mind when using the information written here. Links, code and commands might be outdated or broken.

50 Comments

  • JP
    March 14, 2018 10:44 pm

    Tested and working in Ubuntu 16.04 :)

    Reply
  • Mauricio hoyos diaz
    February 21, 2017 8:55 pm

    Thanks you friend, you help me. i love you

    Reply
  • Chema Gallego
    June 10, 2016 3:57 pm

    Thanks

    Reply
  • cec0r
    December 29, 2015 7:55 pm

    Bullshit it works nothing! I do the same, i have a white site. The Help is for the ass

    Reply
  • tellitlik ehtis
    November 5, 2015 8:27 pm

    your shitty website doesn’t even use this feature… but thanks for the spam.

    Reply
  • fuhk disqus
    November 5, 2015 7:26 pm

    did not work w ubuntu 14.04… and does not cover making sure it works in user_dir examples. /home/$USER/public_html

    Reply
  • Alexandros Mylonas
    July 10, 2015 2:13 am

    Thanks a lot man, classic newbie mistake, been bothering for hours. Good work!

    Reply
  • Adam Davies
    June 25, 2015 11:48 pm

    Thankkk Yoooooo. Awesome & Easy

    Reply
  • Dimas Seputro
    June 20, 2015 6:07 pm

    You just save my life dude… God Bless You :)

    Reply
  • Дмитрий Горбачев
    June 10, 2015 4:19 pm

    Получилось с первого раза. Огромное спасибо автору за статью!

    Reply
  • Devang Jalgaonkar
    June 10, 2015 12:09 pm

    Worked Perfect!!
    Only config file name is not ‘000-default.conf’ in my system(12.04 LTS). Its ‘default’ only.

    Thanks a lot man!!!

    Reply
    • Chris
      June 13, 2015 11:59 pm

      He, the article is clearly for 14.04, not 12.04 (two totally different things!) :)

      Reply
  • Fetch404
    May 30, 2015 6:00 pm

    Thank you for this

    Reply
  • Marcos Martins
    May 2, 2015 7:46 am

    Thanks :)

    Reply
  • meulendreez
    April 29, 2015 10:40 am

    In your recent video about performance myths it was advised not to use AllowOverride All but to put the rewrite rules in the config file and not to use htaccess.

    Reply
  • Dan
    April 26, 2015 9:54 pm

    wonderworld !

    Reply
  • Frederico Bruno
    April 25, 2015 6:36 pm

    thanks man, you really helped me

    Reply
  • Vaibhav Jamadade
    April 20, 2015 8:55 am

    thanks you so much.. its very helpfull

    Reply
  • Marcos Aguilera Ely
    April 17, 2015 8:20 pm

    Works like a charm!

    Reply
  • WebDesign Roma
    April 15, 2015 10:17 am

    after i put AllowOverride All
    i cannot access anymore the website , receiving Forbidden
    permalinks still not working

    Reply
  • Tanmay
    April 11, 2015 10:25 pm

    It works like a charm
    Thank You

    Reply
  • Victor
    March 10, 2015 3:08 pm

    Thanks, this worked for me.

    Reply
  • Taras Bulba
    February 26, 2015 5:09 pm

    Thanks, brother! Simple helpful.

    Reply
  • Ilham Akbar
    January 18, 2015 4:18 pm

    It worked! Thanks!

    Reply
  • Simon
    January 17, 2015 4:49 am

    Thanks, was looking for hours for this solution.

    Reply
  • Peter Munyasi
    January 6, 2015 10:00 am

    Great thanks alot

    Reply
  • mehdi lamaafar
    December 28, 2014 6:12 am

    Thank you

    Reply
  • Prakash Shrestha
    December 26, 2014 12:11 pm

    Very useful tutorial. Explained it very well.

    Reply
  • hallowcard13
    December 13, 2014 7:25 pm

    Thank you for this

    Reply
  • Alexandre Landskron
    December 10, 2014 11:52 pm

    Guy, you saved my life. You are the guy! Thanks a lot!

    Reply
  • Vaibhavraj S. Roham
    November 24, 2014 4:17 pm

    Very useful tutorial. Explained from basics..
    Than you so much..

    Reply
  • Udeme Samuel
    November 12, 2014 5:34 am

    please i tried mine but it did not work… :) Oops but is working now. Thanks!!!

    Reply
  • acrord32
    November 1, 2014 8:32 pm

    Thank you so much

    Reply
  • Dũng Ninh Bình
    September 15, 2014 3:25 pm

    I’m not a professional, so your post is very useful. Thanks you so much

    Reply
  • Kamran Ahmed
    September 2, 2014 6:01 pm

    Works perfectly! Cheers.

    Reply
  • xxxx
    August 29, 2014 9:05 am

    Works wellla!

    Reply
  • rama
    August 27, 2014 10:57 am

    Thanks! you save me

    Reply
  • Mani Maran
    July 28, 2014 8:31 am

    Cakephp:
    Found it! Somewhere along the line I thought it was a good idea to uncomment this line in Config/core.php:
    Configure::write(‘App.baseUrl’, env(‘SCRIPT_NAME’));
    But this is for when url rewriting is NOT enabled, so putting the comment back in did the trick!

    Reply
  • Testaff
    July 22, 2014 5:07 pm

    Thank you for these straight-forward instructions! They work perfect for me even in Zorin OS 9 (based on Ubuntu 14.04LTS) ;-)

    Reply
  • porlo
    June 23, 2014 5:08 am

    it does not work o

    Reply
    • rhamses
      July 6, 2014 9:37 pm

      I had the same reaction, but look closer to your code. In my case, the mod rewrite it wasn’t work because my Rewrite Rule in my .htaccess that redirects to other place. This article works just fine, but we need to configure correctly our website

      Reply

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