title: Unable to read htaccess file - issue with Laravel or permissions?
body: <p>I have deployed Laravel to a Fedora 24 VPS but,</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><strong>Forbidden</strong></p>
    
    <p>You don't have permission to access /index.php on this server.
    Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I have tried setting the web server as owner and adding the command line user to the web server group,</p>
  
  <pre><code>sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/laravel
  sudo usermod -aG apache fedora
  sudo find /var/www/laravel -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
  sudo find /var/www/laravel -type d -exec chmod -c 755 {} \;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have also tried making the command line user the owner and giving the command line user and the web server group permission,</p>
  
  <pre><code>sudo chown -R fedora:apache /var/www/laravel
  sudo find /var/www/laravel -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
  sudo find /var/www/laravel -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Finally I have just tried giving everything 777 permissions but to no avail.</p>
  
  <p>I installed Laravel using Composer -  <code>sudo /usr/bin/composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel /var/www/laravel</code> and this worked fine with no issues. I get no errors using <code>php artisan serve --host 0.0.0.0</code> so could indicate an issue with my http.conf file? </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;VirtualHost *:80&gt;
      DocumentRoot /var/www/laravel/public
  
      &lt;Directory /var/www/laravel&gt;
          AllowOverride All
      &lt;/Directory&gt;
  &lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can anyone share some insight? I'm thinking there may be something wrong with the standard .htaccess but I'm at a loss to explain how.</p>
  
  <h2>Environment:</h2>
  
  <ul>
  <li>PHP 5.6.25</li>
  <li>Apache 2.4.23</li>
  <li>Laravel 5.3.9</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Appreciate your help</p>