Motivation: in my particular case I moved a WordPress site from Bluehost to amazon’s EC2. Permalinks were not working.
Solution: I had to modify the override option from my httpd service.

1. Go to /etc/httpd/conf and edit httpd.conf
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   <Directory />     Options FollowSymLinks     AllowOverride All </Directory>

   <Directory />
       Options FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride All
   </Directory>

2. Change also AllowOverride if it is set to None.
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   # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files. # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords: #   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit #     AllowOverride All

   # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
   # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
   #   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
   #
       AllowOverride All

3. I you haven’t created it yet, place in the root directory of your wordpress installation a .htaccess file with the following contents:
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   # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule>   # END WordPress

   # BEGIN WordPress
   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
   </IfModule>
   
   # END WordPress

Source: this post.