Doug Jaworski

I recently moved to a new Debian Server with Apache 2.x and installed WordPress 2.7.  When I went to change my permalinks, it was not able to configure the permalink feature. I create the appropriate .htaccess file in the root of the WordPress directory but yet it still failed. What I failed to check the .htaccess was enabled. Verify that you have .htaccess enabled in apache (Mod Rewrite) and ensure that your server allows you to override the master Apache configuration directives.

To solve this issue, I simply editied at my Virtual Host configuration file and changed it from

<VirtualHost *>
        DocumentRoot /var/www/SiteName/
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/SiteName/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

To

<VirtualHost *>
        DocumentRoot /var/www/SiteName/
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/SiteName/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride FileInfo
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

Simply change None to FileInfo or All. I chose FileInfo as it is a bit more restrictive. I hope this helps you.