Reading up on doing url rewrites in Apache2, I found this:

"In general, you should never use .htaccess files unless you don't have access to the main server configuration file.

Okay, great. But there is no information anywhere about how to do it in the server configuration file. So before I mess stuff up, can I safely use the same rewrite directives, like

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>    
    Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^test/(\w+)$ test.php?n=$1 [L]
</IfModule>

in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf? /etc/apache2/httpd.conf is blank, but I suppose I could do it there too?

Another question, should the rewrite rule paths be prefixed with /var/www/ or can I do it relative to the site root? Thanks.