aws-ssh 0.0.1

A utility to enable easy SSH connections to AWS EC2 instances.

SSH into your project-specific AWS EC2 instances by name, without having to remember IP addresses & private keys, or a curating a SSH config.

Turn this: ssh -i ~/.ssh/project-key.pem ubuntu@198.51.100.13

Into this: aws-ssh compute

Getting Started

Prerequisites

AWS-SSH requires Python 2.7 or greater on a POSIX system. You will also need to have the AWS CLI installed and configured.

Installing

Pip is the recommended method:

$ pip install aws-ssh

I recommend installing this into a virtualenv, and then symlinking the binaries to your PATH. For example:

$ mkvirtualenv -p $(which python3) aws-ssh # Python 3 recommended
$ pip install aws-ssh
# Assuming ~/bin/ is in your $PATH...
$ ln -s ~/.virtualenvs/aws-ssh/bin/{aws-ssh,awssh,ssh-ec2} ~/bin/
$ deactivate

You should now be able to use AWS-SSH outside of your virtualenv!

Usage

Once installed, you need to create a project. Projects are collections of EC2 instances that share a common set of parameters. For example, I may be working on the squanch project, with the following instances in my AWS account:

• squanch-compute - 198.51.100.13

• squanch-web - 198.51.100.14

• squanch-data - 198.51.100.15

Assuming I keep my squanch-related code in ~/code/squanch, I will first need to initialize an AWS-SSH project within that directory:

$ cd ~/code/squanch
$ aws-ssh --init
Please provide the full path ot the directory containing all private keys: ~/.ssh/
Please provide a name for this project: squanch
Please provide the AWS profile to use: default
Please provide the name of the private key used for authentication (including extension): squanch.pem
Please provide the prefix for EC2 names: squanch-
Please provide the root directory for the project: ~/code/squanch

This will create an .awssshconfig file in the project root directory. You can manage it under version control to get the team on the same page :-)

Now that AWS-SSH has been configured, time to connect to an instance!

$ cd ~/code/squanch
$ aws-ssh web
# Successful SSH connection to 198.51.100.14

Boom.

Notes

• AWS-SSH attempts to guess the username for an instance by testing various usernames. Right now, the sequence of user names is fixed (and based off common AMI usernames). In a future release, this will be configurable.

• If your access is dependent on custom routing (e.g., behind a lazy VPN), you may need to abort the connection attempt (via ^C) and manually add a route for the instance.

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Be sure to use the development package, available under the dev extra.

$ git clone [e-mail]:arusahni/aws-ssh
$ cd aws-ssh
$ pip install -e .[dev]