How do I set up SSH access for an Amazon EC2 instance?

Question

I need SSH access to an Amazon EC2 instance running Ubuntu 10.4. All I have is the Amazon username and password. Any ideas?

Answer 1

If you are using MacOS, you should create/edit SSH configuration file (~/.ssh/config) and put something like:

Host *.amazonaws.com
    User ubuntu
    Port 22
    StrictHostKeyChecking no
    UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
    IdentityFile ~/PATH/YOUR_DOWNLOADED_KEY.pem

Then to connect to any of EC2 instances:

ssh MYNAME.amazonaws.com

Nothing more!