Getting a 500 Internal Server Error on Laravel 5+ Ubuntu 14.04

I have installed Laravel many times on Windows OS but it never occurred this type of problem. This 500 internal server usually occurs when your "mod_rewrite" module is not turned on.

However, on Ubuntu 14.04 this problem is giving me a headache. I have installed rewrite_mod but it's also not working. I've given access to all my folders and files inside i.e.

/var/www/html/laravel_project

Still it doesn't work. Changed .htaccess as well from original to this.

    +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

I have all the necessary extensions needed for Laravel 5+ as well. Is there something left that I didn't do?

Finally Overcame the problem

• It was not the .htaccess file that was the problem nor the index.php. The problem was on accessing the files and requiring permissions.

For solving the problem i ran the following commands through terminal.

sudo chmod -R 755 laravel_blog

and then type below to allow laravel to write file to storage folder

chmod -R o+w laravel_blog/storage

This two commands solved the problem.

Create the .env file and also run :

php artisan key:generate

This worked for me after pulling a git project.

After creating .env file and generating the key, run the code below:

php artisan cache:clear 
php artisan config:clear

After installing run below command

sudo chmod 755 -R laravel
chmod -R o+w laravel/storage

here "laravel" is the name of directory where laravel installed

Try to check if you have .env file.

Mostly this thing can cause something like that. Try to create a file then copy everything from .env.example, paste it to your created file and name it .env. or jsut simply rename the .env.example file to .env and run php artisan key:generate