Permalinks (don't kill me) refuses to work..Yes, it results in a 404

Question

Yes, I've read a lot of pages and discussions, I've tried a lot of options, but NONE have worked so far!

I'm running my own apache2 server, with WordPress, and when changing from /?page_id=xxx to something else (post name), I'm getting 404 on old (and new pages) I'm making.

As I said earlier, I've done a lot of testing, and my last attempt was too disable all plugins and use a totally fresh copy (new default) of .htaccess

then I changed the settings, but no, 404..

if I'm am having a page on https://example.com/?page_id=279 and change to post name permalinks, it will say: https://example.com/test

if I open https://example.com/test it will say 404. if I'm opening https://example.com/?page_id=279, it will redirect to https://example.com/test ..and of course trigger a 404

WordPress can change the .htaccess.

could it be something in MySQL that wrong or even something with apache2?

update: this are my virtual configuration;

SSL configuration:

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost mysite.example.com:443>
    ServerName mysite.example.com
    ServerAdmin arga@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/mysite.example.com
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/argagubben.error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/argagubben.access.log combined


SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mysite.example.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mysite.example.com/privkey.pem
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000"
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>


http:

<VirtualHost mysite.example.com:80>
ServerName mysite.example.com
ServerAlias mysite.example.com

DocumentRoot /var/www/mysite.example.com
    <Directory /var/www/mysite.example.com>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo
        DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
        Require all granted

    </Directory>
<Directory /var/www/mysite.example.com/wp-content>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Require all granted

    </Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/argagubben.error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/argagubben.log combined
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =mysite.example.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>

and these are found in apache2.conf:

<Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all denied
</Directory>

<Directory /usr/share>
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
</Directory>

<Directory /var/www/>
        Options  FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
</Directory>

<FilesMatch "^\.ht">
        Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "cpf.">
    Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

Answer 1

From what you write it sounds like Apache isn't reading/following the .htaccess at all. This can be the case if the AllowOverride setting is not active for that directory. (See this thread on StackOverflow for more information.)

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options  FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Setting this (AllowOverride None -> AllowOverride All) and restarting Apache should solve the problem.