I am also discussing this issue with the Utah PHP Users group. You can find the discussion with the same name here:

http://uphpu.org/pipermail/uphpu/2010-February/

Just look toward the bottom for [UPHPU] Apache 2.2 mod rewrite issue. Here's what I said to open the thread:

Google searches for the entry in the error logs have not helped me resolve this. I have this on my new server:

SuexecUserGroup brasto brasto

ServerName flfn.org

ServerAlias www.flfn.org

ServerAdmin admin at flfn.org

DocumentRoot /home/brasto/www/flfn

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride All

CustomLog /var/log/httpd/brasto/flfn/access_log combined

ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/brasto/flfn/error_log

Next three lines I'll want after fixing rewrite problem:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^flfn.org$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://flfn.org$1 [R=301,L]

Don't try to see the issue on FLFN.org since the site is still on my old server. I access it by modifying /etc/hosts with the new IP until the site is working. I have mod rewrite installed, and I can verify it by uncommenting the last three lines of that vhost. That rewrite works just fine. However, if I install Wordpress or Drupal and try to turn on friendly urls, they create a .htaccess file with these lines:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

With that the whole site seems to work except I can't go to http://flfn.org/ . If I ask for http://flfn.org/index.php it works.

All friendly URLs work. In the .htaccess file, if I comment out every line except 'RewritEngine on' I still have the same problem, and can't request http://flfn.org/ without index.php. If I move the .htaccess file and put those lines in the vhost config, I get a browser error but nothing in the server error logs (not the vhost error logs or the default error logs). Here's what I get in the browser with the .htaccess info added to the vhost:

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at flfn.org Port 80

Here's what I get in the vhost error logs when I request http://flfn.org without /index.php:

[Wed Feb 24 15:05:50 2010] [error] [client 67.182.203.21] Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that RewriteRule directive is forbidden: /home/brasto/www/flfn/, referer: http://flfn.org/admin/reports/status

As you can see, I have Options FollowSymLinks set in the vhost. The .htaccess file also has Options +FollowSymLinks in it.

Any ideas? Please remember to read the other thread to see what we already tried.