I also tried AllowOverwride All, but it was in the wrong configuration file and it broke. (Correct the file to add this is / etc / apache 2 / sites-available / default) This one had a solution for me.
Update for 13.10
In the new installation, I started working as described above, but with the following changes:
/etc/apache 2/sites-available/default, , :
sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
DocumentRoot /var/www:
<Directory /var/www>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
, sudo a2enmod rewrite
/var/www/.htaccess :
sudo chmod 664 /var/www/.htaccess
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/.htaccess
sudo service apache2 restart