SSH to AWS Instance without key pairs

Question

1: Is there a way to log in to an AWS instance without using key pairs? I want to set up a couple of sites/users on a single instance. However, I don't want to give out key pairs for clients to log in.

2: What's the easiest way to set up hosting sites/users in 1 AWS instance with different domains pointing to separate directories?

Answer 1

Answer to Question 1

Here's what I did on a Ubuntu EC2:

A) Login as root using the keypairs

B) Setup the necessary users and their passwords with

# sudo adduser USERNAME # sudo passwd USERNAME 

C) Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config setting

For a valid user to login with no key

PasswordAuthentication yes

Also want root to login also with no key

PermitRootLogin yes

D) Restart the ssh daemon with

# sudo service ssh restart 

just change ssh to sshd if you are using centOS

Now you can login into your ec2 instance without key pairs.

Answer 2

1) You should be able to change the ssh configuration (on Ubuntu this is typically in /etc/ssh or /etc/sshd) and re-enable password logins.

2) There's nothing really AWS specific about this - Apache can handle VHOSTS (virtual hosts) out-of-the-box - allowing you to specify that a certain domain is served from a certain directory. I'd Google that for more info on the specifics.