I’ve just spent a good two to three hours of my time screwing with the Apache 2.0.54 Ubuntu Linux package, just to get mod_rewrite to work properly. So if you have an Error 500 when adding “RewriteEngine On” to your .htaccess, this is the fix for you.

  1. cd /etc/apache2
  2. sudo nano apache2.conf
  3. Add Options +FollowSymLinks
  4. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-restart

and you should be up and running. Hope that assists you people out there. I know I spent too much time on that. :)