Access EC2 without pem file with with username and password

Sometimes you need to grant permissions to someone else and maybe you don’t want to share the .pem file. By default, the ssh access is granted through a .pem file by Amazon EC2.

1. You can create your own user and access the server using a password. In order to set up this, firstly first let’s login on the server as usual

$ ssh -i pem_file.pem ubuntu@ec2- ________.compute-1.amazonaws.com

1. Create a new user

$ sudo useradd -s /bin/bash -m -d /home/USERNAME -g root USERNAME

1. Add a password

$ sudo passwd USERNAME

1. Add users to sudoers

$ sudo visudo

Here you need to add the following line

USERNAME ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

1. Enable the access by password through ssh

$ vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Here you need to search PasswordAuthentication from no to yes.

1. Restart ssh

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

1. Connect to the server using the new user

$ ssh USERNAME@ec2- ________.compute-1.amazonaws.com

This is all.

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