Oliver Nassar

AWS .pem Keys and Usability

July 17, 2012

This one is definitely for me.
I was having problems logging into my AWS EC2 instance. I connect through a custom port (security overkill; sad face), but the problem seemed to be the key.

I went to the AWS console and generated a new key pair, downloaded it, and tried to connect using that, but to no-avail.

It seems that each instance is limited to a specific *.pem file. May be obvious to most, but this is a reminder to myself.

I need that file to connect to the instance with. I can't (or at least, don't know how to) create another pem file to connect to the instance with. It's strange, and frustrating, but I'm sure this'll help me later on when I try to do this exact thing :P

Thus, store that key in a secure place (eg. password-protected file in Dropbox, email, etc.), and then access that whenever needed.