Free Online Tutorials

After create instance you have a pem key like vps1.pem and some information like:

Public DNS (IPv4)
ec2-54-169-145-222.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Convert your private key

Step 1: open PuTTYgen, load private key vps1.pem

Step 2: click OK then click Save private key

Now you have a file eg: vps1.ppk

Starting a PuTTY Session

Step 1: open putty

In the Host Name box, enter user_name@public_dns_name

• For Amazon Linux 2 or the Amazon Linux AMI, the user name is ec2-user.
• For a Centos AMI, the user name is centos.
• For a Debian AMI, the user name is admin.
• For a Fedora AMI, the user name is ec2-user or fedora.
• For a RHEL AMI, the user name is ec2-user.
• For a SUSE AMI, the user name is ec2-user.
• For an Ubuntu AMI, the user name is ubuntu.

Eg: ec2-user@ec2-54-169-145-222.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Port: 22
Connnection type: SSH

Click SSH

Step 2: Click Auth->Browse then choose your ppk file (eg: vps1.ppk)

Click Open

Enable root login

Step 1:

sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

…
PermitRootLogin yes
# Only allow root to run commands over ssh, no shell
#PermitRootLogin forced-commands-only
…
# To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!
PasswordAuthentication yes
#PermitEmptyPasswords no
# EC2 uses keys for remote access
#PasswordAuthentication no
…

Step 2: Reload the sshd settings:

sudo service sshd reload

Step 3: Select a password for root:

sudo passwd root

Now you can login as root, and you can use Bitvise Tunnelier for login

su root