I lost my private key on a server because my hard drive was fried and I didn't have the folder with the key in it backed up. Consequently after research I found that I can make a snapshot of the EC2 instance and launch a new instance with a different key using the snapshot. I was able to do so and setup the new instance with a new key/pair. However, now I still cannot log on to the server through the Amazon client or with Putty SSH. Is there a there a time-frame I have to wait before the instance is SSH ready (i.e. 1 - 2 hours) or did I set it up wrong?
Thanks for any help.
When you ssh using windows m/c, then .ppk key is used and from unix systems .pem key is used.
You can try it once more from an ami, create an ami from the instance and if any ebs volume is attached, consider that too. Use that ami to launch and instance and provide the key at the end as it asks for, if your using the aws web console. In your case create a new keypair to be used and then assign it.
Wait is generally 2-5 minutes for the instance to be up and then try to ssh. Right click on the newly launched instance and check for the log file output. In some cases it can give you the hint.
It is generally preferred to use ebs backed volumes to avoid situations like data loss.
Related
I have an EC2 instance managed by Elastic Beanstalk, and I recently changed my key pair to a new one (findy-key-2) by modifying authorized_keys, because I lost my old private key (findy-key).
$ cat authorized_keys
ssh-rsa [my private key] findy-key-2
So right now I have ssh access to my own instance.
However, perhaps because I changed the key pair manually, it seems that EC2 doesn't recognize the new key pair name correctly. In the EC2 console, it still says the key pair name is findy-key, which I already deleted.
And because of that, I'm getting the error below when trying to upgrade to Amazon Linux 2 on the EB dashboard.
Configuration validation exception: Invalid option value: 'findy-key' (Namespace: 'aws:autoscaling:launchconfiguration', OptionName: 'EC2KeyName'): The key pair 'findy-key' does not exist
I noticed that under Elastic Beanstalk Dashboard > Configuration > Security, I can choose the new key from the EC2 key pair drop-down. But the warning message, Each of your existing EC2 instances will be replaced and your new settings will take effect then. implying that my current instance will be terminated, is frightening me because there might be some side effects such as loosing connection to my RDS volume (yes, I'm a newbie to AWS).
Hence, I'm trying to find a way to change the key pair name of an EC2 instance without terminating and creating a new one. If that's not possible, I want to know what are the possible side effects of replacing an EC2 instance.
Thank you.
For short term solution, you can use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to login to your instances. For this you will need to add SSM permissions to your EB instance profile/role.
You can also try using EC2 Instance Connect which may work out of the box on the instances and you don't have to do anything special to use it.
But for the long term solution, you have to use EB options for that. The reason is that you instances run in Autoscaling group and they can be terminated at any time anyway. So if you are worrying about "some side effects", they you have to redesign your application so that it is stateless. This means that your application does not depend on any instance terminations and re-launch due to autoscaling events.
I solved this by creating another private key named findy-key (which is the name of the old key I deleted before) in AWS Console, and adding its public key in authorized_keys.
When creating an AMI image from an existing EC2 instance, does it require the restart of the existing instance?
I make a copy of the instance, and subsequently the server went down because it turned off a process monitor which led to downtime, but I can't remember if it was because I rebooted the system (I can't remember if I rebooted it), or if it was because I made a copy of the image.
There's option to enable No reboot during create AMI
When creating an AMI image from an existing EC2 instance, does it require the restart of the existing instance
to answer this yes, when ami is being created aws the instance for ensuring data integrity.
doc says this "Amazon EC2 powers down the instance before creating the AMI to ensure that everything on the instance is stopped and in a consistent state during the creation process."
you can override this behaviour by enabling no reboot while creating ami.
No reboot – This option is not selected by default. Amazon EC2 shuts down the instance, takes snapshots of any attached volumes, creates and registers the AMI, and then reboots the instance. Select No reboot to avoid having your instance shut down.
refer 6 point of this https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/creating-an-ami-ebs.html.
also whenever you are unsure about anything just follow the docs of that service, it will be define in one way or the another.
I'm new to EC2 and I mistakenly terminated an instance that was setup the way that I like and had taken EBS snapshots of (root volume).
I created an AMI based on the snapshot I wanted, but when I launch a new instance, I no longer am able to decrypt the Administrator password for the volume. I tried these steps but couldn't get it to work even though I have the pem for the key file.
Is there anyway to recover this Administrator password?
The password for this is the same as the one you took the snapshot from.
If you still have that password you can use it to connect, otherwise you will need to reset it.
All hope is not lost, there are a few official solutions used to reset the password.
I've recently made an AMI from an important server instance I had. Recently, I made an AMI out of that instance, and then deleted it in order to save space. Now, I'm trying to make an instance from that custom AMI, and in-order to connect to it I need the old password(For some reason that is what it requires). I still own the .pem keypair file needed to decode the password, however it wont let me get and de-crypt the key.
What should i do in order to get the password of the custom AMI?
Assuming that you are using a Windows instance, you can follow these directions in the Amazon EC2 documentation: Resetting an Administrator Password that's Lost or Expired.
The process uses another EC2 instance to access the disk to modify a configuration setting, allowing you to retrieve a new password.
Basically, the steps are:
Stop the "original" instance
Launch a "temporary" instance
Detach the boot volume (let's call it Volume A) from the original instance
Attach Volume A to the temporary instance
Modify a setting will which cause the EC2Config service to generate a new password
Detach Volume A from the temporary instance
Reattach Volume A to the original instance
Boot the original instance
Use the standard "Get Windows Password" process to retrieve the new password
First off, I'm a new-born with AWS (started looking into it two days ago). My client needs a new Drupal 6 module, I have it done, all I need is to upload it and set some things up. My client gave me a username and password for Amazon, so I figured they were using AWS.
I can see the Running Instance, and I've followed Amazon documentation to add a new Key Pair and also add my a custom IP rule for SSH access. Problem is, when I try to connect via ssh with a very simple and basic command
ssh -i taskey.pem ec2-user#ec-x-x-x-x...amazonaws.com
the reponse is
Permission denied (publickey).
Satus of my environment:
Existing SSH rule for my IP address on the Security Group associated to the running Instance
New Key Pair added to the running instance
key.pem file has 0600 permission
I know it's a Centos machine because when I ping the site's IP part of the response says it is. Hence why I use username ec2-user
Just in case, I've also tried ubuntu and root.
Reading around some, it seems that you can't just magically add new Key Pairs to running instances. There is an existing public key for my running instance, but it was created in the past by another worker, and I can't contact them.
My client has no repository, hence, as you can imagine, why I'm not just trying loads of things. If I break it, everything gets lost.
This answer suggests to delete the old Key Pair (the one I have no .pem file for). But I don't know what the consequences of that might be.
Sorry for such noobness but I'm in a rush and have no room to try things.
Thanks in advance.
EDIT
I've chosen the "create an AMI..." answer, simply because it's the one I went for. I liked the fact that the old machine could be kept (shut down) and if anything went wrong all I had to do was turn it on again. I up-voted the other possible answer in regards to mounting and unmounting the hard drive, because it's another way of doing it and, in some cases, the only way.
Steps followed to achieve SSH ACCESS SUCCESSFULLY:
Stop running instance
Create an AMI from it (right click and choose Create Image)
Once that was created I launched it and gave it the same specifics as the original instance
Supply it with my new key-pair
Repointed my assigned elastic-IP (that's the only service I had, luckily very simple). Went to
Elastic IPs, saw the existing one (which no longer had anything assigned to it since the original
instance was shut down. Right clicked it and chose Associate Address and chose the new running
instance from the created AMI in the Associate with list.)
Checked I had SSH access to it.
You cannot add a new key pair to a running instance - like it says in the comments of the answer you point to.
I'm afraid that if you cannot contact a person who has the original .pem file you will not be able to connect to that machine via SSH.
You can create an AMI image from it, and create a new machine from that AMI with the new key-pair. There you could do all the changes you need, and then, point whatever services using it to the new machine. After you verify that the new machine is up to par, you can terminate the old machine.
Amazon provides a guide for connecting to an instance if you lose your private key. As long as it's an EBS backed instance. See here:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-key-pairs.html#replacing-lost-key-pair
The general procedure for doing so is (from the docs):
You must stop the instance, detach its root volume and attach it to another instance as a data volume, modify the authorized_keys file, move the volume back to the original instance, and restart the instance.