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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
User Guide for Linux Instances

Connecting to Your Linux Instance Using MindTerm

After you launch your instance, you can connect to it and use it the way that you'd use a computer sitting in front of you.

Note

After you launch an instance, it can take a few minutes for the instance to be ready so that you can connect to it. Check that your instance has passed its status checks - you can view this information in the Status Checks column on the Instances page.

The following instructions explain how to connect to your instance using MindTerm through the Amazon EC2 console. If you receive an error while attempting to connect to your instance, see Troubleshooting Connecting to Your Instance.

Important

The Chrome browser does not support the NPAPI plugin, which may prevent the MindTerm client from loading. For more information, go to the Chromium NPAPI deprecation article. You can use Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer 9 or higher instead.

Prerequisites

  • Install Java

    Your Linux computer most likely includes Java. If not, see How do I enable Java in my web browser? On a Windows or Mac client, you must run your browser using administrator credentials. For Linux, additional steps may be required if you are not logged in as root.

  • Enable Java in your browser

    For instructions, see https://java.com/en/download/help/enable_browser.xml.

  • Locate the private key

    You'll need the fully-qualified path of the .pem file for the key pair that you specified when you launched the instance.

  • Enable inbound SSH traffic from your IP address to your instance

    Ensure that the security group associated with your instance allows incoming SSH traffic from your IP address. For more information, see Authorizing Network Access to Your Instances.

    Important

    Your default security group does not allow incoming SSH traffic by default.

Starting MindTerm

To connect to your instance using a web browser with MindTerm

  1. In the Amazon EC2 console, click Instances in the navigation pane.

  2. Select the instance, and then click Connect.

  3. Click A Java SSH client directly from my browser (Java required).

  4. Amazon EC2 automatically detects the public DNS name of your instance and the name of the populates Public DNS for you. It also detects name of the key pair that you specified when you launched the instance. Complete the following, and then click Launch SSH Client.

    1. In User name, enter the user name to log in to your instance.

      Tip

      For Amazon Linux, the user name is ec2-user. For RHEL5, the user name is either root or ec2-user. For Ubuntu, the user name is ubuntu. For Fedora, the user name is either fedora or ec2-user. For SUSE Linux, the user name is either root or ec2-user. Otherwise, if ec2-user and root don't work, check with your AMI provider.

    2. In Private key path, enter the fully-qualified path to your private key (.pem) file, including the key pair name; for example:

      C:\KeyPairs\my-key-pair.pem

    3. (Optional) Click Store in browser cache to store the location of the private key in your browser cache. This enables Amazon EC2 to detect the location of the private key in subsequent browser sessions, until your clear your browser's cache.

  5. If necessary, click Yes to trust the certificate, and click Run to run the MindTerm client.

  6. If this is your first time running MindTerm, a series of dialog boxes asks you to accept the license agreement, to confirm setup for your home directory, and to confirm setup of the known hosts directory. Confirm these settings.

  7. A dialog prompts you to add the host to your set of known hosts. If you do not want to store the host key information on your local computer, click No.

  8. A window opens and you are connected to your instance.

    Note

    If you clicked No in the previous step, you'll see the following message, which is expected:

    Verification of server key disabled in this session.