How to Connect EC2 Instance with VSCode Directly using pem file in SFTP

Question

I'm trying to connect EC2 Instance directly from VS Code using SFTP. I can able to connect other ftp service using [password] type, but for EC2 instance i'm having only .pem file. Expecting something like this but using public key .pem file

{
"protocol": "sftp",
"host": "localhost",
"port": 22,
"username": "username",
"remotePath": "/"
}

Firsh - justifiedgrid.com · Answer 1 · 2022-06-14T16:42:59.873

52

If you want to connect your VS Code to AWS EC2, use the Remote Development extension pack (if it's not installed already). The .pem private key file and the standard SSH config (extensionless text file) will reside at:

C:\Users\YourName\.ssh\aws-example-user.pem

C:\Users\YourName\.ssh\config

Make the latter have contents like this:

Host aws-ec2
     HostName example.dev
     User example
     IdentityFile "C:\Users\YourName\.ssh\aws-example-user.pem"

You can specify nonstandard port by Port 2222 and HostName can be an IP address (on AWS fixed IPs are called elastic). The key file (sometimes extensionless) has the words PRIVATE KEY in it. New: use the ed25519 type of key if it fails to connect. This is not just for AWS EC2, but any similar system such as Ubuntu in a VM or even a Raspberry Pi.

PS: I wrote an article detailing the whole VS Code to AWS EC2 setup.

Side note: VS Code server needs about 2GB of RAM to run smoothly, if you have less, try zram.

edited Jun 14 '22 at 16:42

answered Feb 19 '20 at 16:33

Firsh - justifiedgrid.com

5,389
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1

Nice article, just what I was looking for! – gabriel capparelli Mar 12 '20 at 15:18
1

Thanks! This is what I needed – kumail Mar 28 '20 at 21:16
1

The article is helpful. – cnu Sep 02 '20 at 21:23
1

Thanks for the tip - FYI, you'll need double-quotes around the filename if it has spaces – Wet Noodles Sep 18 '20 at 18:25
1

this is the way – MoneyBall Jan 23 '21 at 13:44
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Note it might not work if your pem file is not in .ssh directory see https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/1619#issuecomment-541973989 – citynorman May 08 '21 at 01:35
1

Thank u v.much :) – Anandan K Sep 01 '21 at 11:23
Put the identity file path in double inverted commas. "C:\...." – Dan Mar 26 '22 at 08:00
for mac it is for example /users/yourname/.ssh remove double quote backslash to be forward slash – Amr Aug 06 '22 at 03:18
Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrFcA7GuB0g&ab_channel=TechwithFrank – Eric Ballard Jan 26 '23 at 20:16

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 28 '19 at 12:47

16

Try this config.json on VScode

{
    "remotePath": "/",
    "host": "<IP-OR_EC2-INSTANCE-HOST-NAME>", 
    "username": "USERNAME",
    "password": "PASSWORD",
    "port": 22,
    "secure": true,
    "protocol": "sftp",
    "uploadOnSave": true, 
    "passive": false,
    "debug": true,
    "privateKeyPath": "<PATH-TO-PEM-FILE>",
    "passphrase": null,
    "ignore": [
       ------
    ],
    "generatedFiles": {
        "uploadOnSave": false,
        "extensionsToInclude": [],
        "path": ""
    }
}

answered Jan 28 '19 at 12:47

Niroshan Ranapathi

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Thank u v.much :) – Anandan K Jan 28 '19 at 12:57
1

This https://stackoverflow.com/a/60305052/7870866 answer seems to be more appropriate now. – alter123 Mar 03 '20 at 19:04
I don't know how to use this JSON but I found a solution in a comment below from alter123 , thank you alter123. – Harikrushna Patel Feb 02 '22 at 15:43

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 15 '19 at 05:50

Open the sftp.json config file by pressing ctrl + Shift+ P then type SFTP:Config and edit "host", "privateKeyPath" then save the json file

{
"name": "GIVE ANY NAME",
"host": "ec2-.........compute.amazonaws.com",
"protocol": "sftp",
"port": 22,
"username": "ec2-user",
"privateKeyPath": "SPECIFY YOUR PATH/FILENAME.pem",
"remotePath": "/",
"uploadOnSave": true
}

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 12 '19 at 16:27

In my mac OS Catalina 10.15 with Visual Studio 1.39.0 works this, usign a Key Pem:

Note: privateKeyPath, is the path of the key.pem in your computer.

{
    "name": "id0000533-test",
    "protocol": "sftp",
    "host": "ec2-12-123-123-123.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com",
    "remotePath": "/var/www/laravel",
    "privateKeyPath": "../keypem/id0000533-test.pem",
    "username": "admin",
    "port": 22,
    "secure": true,
    "uploadOnSave": true,
    "passive": false,
    "debug": true,
    "ignore": [
        "\\.vscode",
        "\\.git",
        "\\.DS_Store"
    ],
    "generatedFiles": {
        "uploadOnSave": true,
        "extensionsToInclude": [],
        "path": "./"
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 15 '21 at 18:09

New VSCode Remote-SSH gives errors, a combination of 2 things worked for me:

Revert to Remote-SSH 0.49 or before
Change the permissions on the pem file to list user as the only owner and remove inheritance for other users.

After tons of trial and error Remote-SSH worked again, this time to Amazon EC2 running Ubuntu.

How to Connect EC2 Instance with VSCode Directly using pem file in SFTP

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