How to retrieve Amazon EC2 Password?

Question

I have created an Amazon EC2 instance. I have got the password file and it was lost. How to login now without the password ? Is there any way to create a new login ?

Answer 1

You can't once you deleted your private key file and if you don't have a copy of it then you have no way of logging in. You can try this assuming it's an EBS backed instance:

1. Stop your EC2 instance
2. Detach your root Volume (/dev/sda1) -- Assuming this is Volume A
3. Spin up a new EC2 instance of the same type.
4. Attach Volume A to that new instance as /dev/sdf
5. ssh connect to his new instance.
6. mkdir -p /mnt/xvdf
7. mount /dev/xvdf /mnt/xvdf
8. `cp ~/.ssh to /mnt/xvdf/home//.
9. chmod 700 /mnt/xvdf/home/<username>
10. chmod 600 /mnt/xvdf/home/<username>/authorized_keys
11. Shutdown new instance
12. Detach Volume A on new instance
13. Reattach Volume A on /dev/sda1 on original instance.
14. Start original instance.

You should be able to login now.