Recipe: How to password recovery a Linux Amazon Ec2 instance

Imagine you have an Amazon Ec2 instance, and you miss your ssh keys, and passwords. How can you execute a password recovery? That is easy, mount your disk on other machine to do that. First a t all you need and EBS root instance.

Stop the machine

Detach the volume from machine

Create a new machine on the same availability zone, for example a micro instance with fedora, an start it

Attach the volume to it, for example on /dev/sdh. Don’t use the elasticfox, I don’t know don’t work for me, use the aws web.

Mount the disk, change passwords, add ssh key, or any recovery action you need

Unmount the partition

You could terminate this instance is no longer needed

Attach the partition, to the same machine, don’t use the elasticI don’t know don’t work for me, use the aws web. IMPORTANT Attach to /dev/sda1.

Start the instance

That’s it, you have your instance recovered.