Connecting to my Ubuntu AWS instance using a GUI interface

Question

I need to transfer files from my local desktop system (running ubuntu 11) to my aws instance running Ubuntu 11. command line works just fine for me, however, I need a GUI solution.

I have seen this question & the responses already,

Is there any WinSCP equivalent for linux?

However, the difference in accessing an aws instance is that I dont go through the password route, rather I go through an identity file (abcd.pem)

Tried using the file -> connect to server approach in ubuntu, but it doesnt have an option for applying identity files. Any other ideas ? ticks ? tools ??

Answer 1

Somewhat messy, but try creating a custom section in your .ssh/config file that specifies the identity file to use. This will look like this:

Host {alias}
HostName {hostname or IP address}
User {username to log in with}
IdentityFile {path to abcd.pem}

and then try using connect to server with the alias you specified in the config file. See if that works?

Answer 2

You could use sshfs to mount the remote directory locally and then just use your native file manager.

Something like this would do it:

sudo apt-get install sshfs
mkdir /mnt/your_server_name
sshfs -o ssh_command="ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/your_identity.pem" ubuntu@your_server_name:/path/on/the/server /mnt/your_server_name

Then open your native file manager and copy/move/delete/etc as you would to any other location on your local workstation. The only difference being that operations in /mnt/your_server_name will operate on the remote server.