rsync between 2 AWS EC2 insatnces: cannot locate .pem file

Question

Need a bit of help with this.

I want to manually run a script every now and then to move files between my production and dev instances.

at the moment I have this as a shell script:

rsync --progress -avz -e "ssh -vvv -i $HOME/.ssh/my-ubuntu-ec2.pem" ubuntu@:111.111.111.111/var/www/test /var/www/test

My issue is that I cannot locate or contact the.pem file. I have scoured the usual places and done a file search across the whole system, but nothing.

The keypair in question was created through the console, and I manually added the keys to the authorized_keys in the usual way. I would have thought the console would have deployed the keys to the EC2 instance, but that doesn't seem to be the case. At least, I can't find them.

I am sure someone will be able to spot where I am going wrong!
Thanks in advance,
Jason

Answer 1

When creating a Keypair in the Amazon EC2 management console, a keypair ( .pem file) is downloaded to your computer. This is the private key.

Creating a keypair in the console does not put the key on any existing Amazon EC2 instances. However, when launching a new instance, you can select a keypair and it will be added to the /home/ec2-user/.ssh/authorized_keys file.

If you have the private key, you can generate a public key from the.pem file with:

ssh-keygen -y -f key.pem > key.pub

The public key should be placed in the destination computer's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file for destination user (which is ubuntu in your command sample).

The private key should be used on the source computer (as per my-ubuntu-ec2.pem in your code sample).

If you have lost the private key, you will need to generate a new one and replace the keys on the instances.