Simple mod_rewrite rule is not working - apache

Question

In my main public directory, I have this .htaccess file, however when visiting /register I get a 404 error.
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^register$ register.php
With this, I want to make anyone who visits /register to use /register.php. I am certain that mod_rewrite is enabled and AllowOverride All is present in my virtual host file.
Does anyone know how I can troubleshoot this? All I get is The requested URL /register was not found on this server.
Virtual host:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin my#email.com
ServerName my.site.com
DocumentRoot /home/mark/public
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /home/mark/public>
Options All MultiViews ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /home/mark/logs/public_error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /home/mark/logs/public_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

<Directory /home/mark/public>
Options All MultiViews ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
You need to turn off MultiViews:
Options All -MultiViews ExecCGI
It's messing with optional content negotiation. From the apache documentation:
If the server receives a request for /some/dir/foo and /some/dir/foo does not exist, then the server reads the directory looking for all files named foo.*, and effectively fakes up a type map which names all those files, assigning them the same media types and content-encodings it would have if the client had asked for one of them by name. It then chooses the best match to the client's requirements, and returns that document.
If you're going to have a rule to rewrite /register to /register.php, you don't want MutliViews mucking things up before it even gets to your rewrite rules.

Answer 2

This works for me:
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
....
</VirtualHost>
/var/www/.htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/register$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ register.php [NS,L]
EDIT: added DocumentRoot /var/www