Launch an AWS EC2 Instance from an iPad or iPhone
I couldn’t find any instructions online on how to launch an AWS EC2 instance from an iPad or iPhone.
The problem is generating an RSA key from an iPad. The AWS web interface doesn’t lend it’s self to allowing iOS devices to download the private RSA key.
It turns out you can generate an RSA key pair with the free Serverauditor SSH client for iOS. Heres how…
Open up the Serverauditor app on your iPhone / iPad and select ‘Keychain’ from the left hand menu.
Click the ‘+’ symbol.
Select ‘New Key’.
Give the new key a name and select ‘Save’.
Now click ‘Edit’ at the top right.
Select the key you just created, this time click ‘Edit’ at the top left.
Select the ‘Public’ tab for the public key. Then select ‘Copy’.
Now log into your AWS EC2 console and select ‘Key Pairs’ from the left hand menu.
Select ‘Import Key Pair’.
Enter a key pair name and paste in the public key you copied out of Serverauditor. Select ‘Import’.
You can see the new public key has been imported. Select ‘Instances’ from the left hand menu.
Select ‘Launch Instance’.
Select the image that you’d like to use for the new instance. I selected a 64-bit Ubuntu image.
Select an instance type. I selected the ‘Free tier eligible’ ‘t2.micro’ instance type. Then select ‘Review and Launch’.
Scroll down to ‘Securty Groups’ and ensure that inbound SSH is allowed. If not you’ll need to select ‘Edit security groups’ and add an entry to allow inbound SSH connections.
Select ‘Launch’.
From the first drop downs select ‘Choose an existing key pair’ and then from the second drop down, select the key we imported earlier. Tick the checkbox to indicate that understand you’ll lock yourself out of the newly created instance if this goes wrong. Select ‘Launch Instances’.
From the next screen select ‘View Instances’.
At the bottom of the instances page, select the ‘Description’ tab. Copy the ‘Public IP’ value.
Open up Serverauditor, select ‘Quick Connect’ from the left hand menu. Enter the IP address you just copied into the ‘Host’ field. Enter the default username for the instance image you selected. I used Ubuntu, the default username for this image is ‘ubuntu’. Select the key icon.
Select the key you created in the app earlier.
Select ‘Connect’.
Select ‘Continue’.
And there you are…
15 thoughts on “Launch an AWS EC2 Instance from an iPad or iPhone”
Brilliant! Thanks! SSHing into the world’s computing power with an iPhone is a delight.
Thanks for the comment. I’m glad this helped!
This worked perfectly for me until the last step, after I select “Continue” I am asked for a Username and Password, which I have not set up, any suggestions?
How, thanks
Sorry, I figured it out
Tim! Awesome help on how to accomplish this! Really awesome work! Thank you!
Hi. Unfortunately, I keep getting a connection establishment time out error. This is similar to the Putty Fatal Error Network error: Connection timed out error that I keep getting. I’ve checked everything that the AWS documentation suggested: adding a security group rule allowing SSH from my computer to port 22, checked the rout table for a rout that sends all traffic outside the VPC to the Internet gateway, verified that the IG is attached to the VPC, checked there is a rout from 0.0.0.0/0 to the VPC as the target. I also checked the ACL to allow traffic to and from my laptop. Still no joy. I’m waiting for AWS support to assist with this, since I’ve paid for developer support. Any ideas?
Hi Ernest
I’m not sure what the answer is for your problem. Timed out does suggest that the initial 3 way handshake to set up the TCP session isn’t completing though. I’ve approved the post so that others might be able to help.
Tried it again today and I finally got in! Finally.! Thanks for your expertise.
I spoke too soon. Seems like I momentarily connected, but after looking at the terminal, the IP looked like the private IP. Also the user was “Fedora” instead of ec2-user. Will keep troubleshooting after I scan my laptop for viruses.
Changed my region and now I’m GTG. Happy Holidays!
How do I get the username and password
I can’t find Serverauditor in the Appstore on my iPad. Any suggestions?
(No idea why this is writing all in Uppercase!)
It was renamed to Termius.
Thanks for checking out the site but this is a really old post, so might not be relevant on the new software.
this is really great , thank you for the tutorioal , really works like a charm.