EC2 Key Pair Troubleshooting

• EC2 stores the public key (.pub) and you store the private key (.pem).

• You use the private key, instead of a password, to securely access your instances.

• Anyone who possesses your private keys can connect to your instances, so it's important that you store your private keys in a secure place.

What happens when you delete your EC2 key pair?

• When you delete a key pair, you are only deleting the EC2 copy of the public key.

• Deleting a key pair doesn't affect the private key on your computer or the public key on any instances that already launched using that key pair.

• You can't launch a new instance using a deleted key pair, but you can continue to connect to any instances that you launched using a deleted key pair, as long as you still have the private key file.

Connect to your Linux instance if you lose your private key

• If you lose the private key for an EBS-backed instance, you can regain access to your instance.

• Stop the instance.

• Detach its root volume/copy its AMI and attach it to another instance.

• Modify the authorized_keys file with a new public key.

• Move the volume/AMI back to the original instance.

• Restart the instance.