Use ImportKeyPair with an Amazon SDK or CLI

To import a public key

First, generate a key pair with the tool of your choice. For example, use this ssh-keygen command:

Command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "my-key" -f ~/.ssh/my-key

Output:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/ec2-user/.ssh/my-key.
Your public key has been saved in /home/ec2-user/.ssh/my-key.pub.
...

This example command imports the specified public key.

Command:

aws ec2 import-key-pair --key-name "my-key" --public-key-material fileb://~/.ssh/my-key.pub

Output:

{
  "KeyName": "my-key",
  "KeyFingerprint": "1f:51:ae:28:bf:89:e9:d8:1f:25:5d:37:2d:7d:b8:ca"
}

Example 1: This example imports a public key to EC2. The first line stores the contents of the public key file (*.pub) in the variable $publickey. Next, the example converts the UTF8 format of the public key file to a Base64-encoded string, and stores the converted string in the variable $pkbase64. In the last line, the converted public key is imported to EC2. The cmdlet returns the key fingerprint and name as results.

$publickey=[Io.File]::ReadAllText("C:\Users\TestUser\.ssh\id_rsa.pub")
$pkbase64 = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($publickey))
Import-EC2KeyPair -KeyName Example-user-key -PublicKey $pkbase64

Output:

KeyFingerprint                                  KeyName
--------------                                  -------
do:d0:15:8f:79:97:12:be:00:fd:df:31:z3:b1:42:z1 Example-user-key