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

You need to create a key pair first - do that using your EC2 console. Then use your private key to SSH into the server (the username is ec2-user) using a SSH client of your choice.

Once in, you can issue a sudo su - to gain root if you want (note: you cant log in as root directly).