Deploy a CakePHP website fails. An apache2 config issue? - apache

Question

I'm deploying a CakePHP (1.3.2) website for the first time. It was hosted on an older server. I received the project as a zip file. I managed to install it on my localhost and made the changes I needed.
Now I have to deploy it to a new server, but I face a problem.
The routing doesn't seem to work. I guess it's an .htaccess issue.
When I access the root folder, it redirects me to /login but then I have a 404:
The requested URL /login was not found on this server.
My 3 main .htaccess files (/, /app and /app/webroot) are the following. (CakePHP is installed at the root of my virtual host)
Root
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
/app
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
/app/webroot
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
mod_rewrite seems to be activated on my server as it responds with this when I try to add it:
Module rewrite already enabled
But when I try something simple like that on top of my root .htaccess, it doesn't do anything:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^.*$ test.php
</IfModule>
(I was following this guide: https://docs.bolt.cm/howto/making-sure-htaccess-works)
Among a lot of things, I also tried to add that to all my .htaccess:
Option Indexes
But it didn't help.
Here is my website conf file too:
<VirtualHost xx.x.xx.xx:80>
ServerAdmin xxx#company.com
ServerName xxx.company.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/xxx.company.com
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
php_value error_log "/var/log/apache2/xxx.company.com-phperror.log"
php_flag register_globals off
<Directory "/var/www/xxx.company.com">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/xxx.company.com-error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/xxx.company.com-access.log common
</VirtualHost>
(I added the Directory section that was not here in the first place)
After a lot of trials, I still haven't found anything that seems to solve my problem.
As I'm definitely not used to work on server side, It might be a simple thing that you will immediately spot. I hope so.
Thanks

Answer 1

I finally got it to work. Here are the two mistakes I made:
I had my document root set cake's root folder instead of the webroot folder. I added /app/webroot after DocumentRoot /var/www/xxx.company.com in my .conf file.
Also, I was using apache's reload function, which is actually not properly reloading. Using service apache2 restart instead does the job.