awsssh

A tool to SSH into EC2 instances via an appropriate bastion¹. Inspired by work at previous companies where a custom bastion service was required to log into instances.

AWS SSM is a good alternative to doing something like this

Installation

From Source

If you have go 1.17.x installed:

go build

From GitHub Enterprise

Binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux are published here.

Manual Installation

On the right hand side of this GitHub page, go to "Releases"
Select/Download the .tar.gz file for your operating system (i.e. Darwin for macOS)
Open a terminal
Move into the directory where it downloaded the file (ie. ~/Downloads)
- cd <DIRECTORY>
Extract the .tar.gz file
- tar -xf <FILENAME>.tar.gz
Make your binary avialble
- macOS/Linux: Move binary to mv awsssh /usr/local/bin OR Add the location of the binary to your PATH
- Windows: Whereever you put the binary, add that directory to your PATH

NOTE: On macOS, you may get a prompt that the binary developer cannot be verified. In that case, Go to Security & Privacy and add the binary to Developer Tools

Usage

SSH into instances with a known IP/hostname

Hostname DNS resolution is supported, if you have an instance behind an A record and don't want to nslookup the IP address every time:

awsssh example.com

This will expand into:

ssh <username>@<ipaddress>

SSH into instances by searching AWS

For querying by the Name tag on your EC2 instances, the tool assumes your AWS profiles and security tokens have been configured for your user:

The tool will read your $HOME/.aws/credentials file to determine what profiles you have access to before querying the EC2 API.

Search for an instance tag name:

awsssh -q myinstance

Search for an instance ID:

awsssh -i i-0123456789abcdefg

Search for instances by region:

awsssh --region us-west-2

Usage:

NAME:
   awsssh - SSH into AWS EC2 instances

USAGE:
   awsssh [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]

VERSION:
   1.0.9

COMMANDS:
   help, h  Shows a list of commands or help for one command

GLOBAL OPTIONS:
   --profile value             the AWS profile to use when connecting [$AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE]
   --region value, -r value    AWS region (default: "us-east-1") [$AWS_DEFAULT_REGION]
   --query value, -q value     query that will search by the name tag
   --instance value, -i value  instance ID
   --help, -h                  show help
   --version, -v               print the version

Releasing

make
VERSION=<version> make version
git push --tags origin master
make publish

Notes

1: A reference architecture from AWS on how bastions are typically configured: https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/linux-bastion/

roadmapper / awsssh