htaccess works in localhost but doesn't work in EC2 instance

I pieced together some info from various posts so I thought I'd put up an answer.

1. As Paul commented, If you're running Amazon EC2 Linux, you're probably running httpd instead of Apache. The file is therefore in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
2. You have to change the file as root user. (from ssh access) Do this: sudo vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (How to edit httpd.conf file in AMAZON EC2)
3. DocumentRoot "/var/www/html" was listed in two places for me. I had to change the subsequent AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All in those two places.
4. Restart apache. I restarted my whole ec2 instance (i have apache configured to start automatically) although just restarting apache should work. But I see the change is working.

I was trying to make the same changes in a .htaccess file (removing the index.php from urls in a code igniter application). Hope it helps!

By default EC2 doesn't have .htaccess enabled, you must edit your httpd.config to allow for it.

In /etc/apache/sites-available/default change AllowOverRide = None to AllowOverRide = All.

Its a three step process

1. Configure apache mod_rewrite,run in terminal.sudo a2enmod rewrite

2. add the following code to /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

DocumentRoot /var/www<Directory />Options FollowSymLinksAllowOverride All</Directory><Directory /var/www/>Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViewsAllowOverride AllOrder allow,denyallow from all</Directory>

3.Restart apache

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart