Rewrite rules aren’t working

I’m trying to set up a permalink structure on my wordpress installation. It doesn’t seem to work.

I’m using a CVS snapshot, which creates the .htaccess file itself. It shows up fine, but none of the rules are actually used. I turned on the RewriteLog, and nothing ever shows up in it. Clicking on any permalink (or Rewritten URL) produces a 404.

Moving the RewriteRules from .htaccess into the <VirtualHost> section of my Apache config fixes things, but I don’t want to have to fiddle with the main configuration. I can’t seem to get any RewriteRules to work in .htaccess in a VirtualHost context at all, though they work fine in /var/www or ~/public_html.

I’m running Apache 1.3.33, PHP 4.3.10, and WordPress 2004-12-16 (CVS snap) on Debian sarge.

Any idea what’s going on here?