I'm getting really frustrated today, while trying to just set up my development environement and start doing some actual work.

After installing php, apache2 and mysql over apt-get install phpmyadmin I'm trying since about an hour, to make .htaccess files work in my /var/www/projectname/.htaccess

I tried out multiple solutions, that basically told me to edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default but none of them seemed to work.

What I tried:

<Directory /var/www/>

    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

    AllowOverride None

    #AllowOverride All

    #AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo Indexes Limit Options=All, MultiViews        

    Order allow,deny

    allow from all

</Directory>

The commented lines are what I tried, both didnt work. I either get a 500 internal error (when I set AllowOverride All) or the .htaccess doesnt do anything.

Can someone help me here? I need to get this to work, to finally start working :)

As side note, my knowledge with ubuntu or linux in common, is very slim - I just do what google tells me.

cat /etc/issue: Ubuntu 11.10