CentOS Apache .htaccess: Options not allowed here (500 - Internal Server Error)

Question

I am installing Apache in CentOS 7 and this is my httpd.conf - http://pastebin.com/raw/YeiLn7GN

This is my document root: /home/host/public_html

To test if .htaccess file works & if mod_rewrite is enabled, I've uploaded the sample .htaccess from a laravel project into /home/host/public_html/.htaccess , which has the following contents:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
        Options -MultiViews
    </IfModule>

    RewriteEngine On

    # Redirect Trailing Slashes...
    RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

    # Handle Front Controller...
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>

I then uploaded the following php script: /home/host/public_html/index.php

<?php echo '<pre>'; print_r($_SERVER); ?>

When I visit http://<my-server-ip>/index.php , I get the following error:

500 Internal Server Error

I got found the following in /var/log/httpd/apache_error_log file:

[Thu Dec 31 15:50:43.696465 2015] [core:alert] [pid 23807] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:56536] /home/host/public_html/.htaccess: Options not allowed here

If I remove the following lines from the .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
    Options -MultiViews
</IfModule>

The script appears to load and no 500 error.

Any ideas what might be wrong?

Answer 1

.htaccess: Options not allowed here error indicates that the htaccess file is not allowed to use the Options directive to change the settings.

To fix this error edit your apache config file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf :-

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride Options
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

Adding "Options" to the AllowOverride list, will permit the use of Options directive in htaccess file