EC2: Coda Public Key Authentication

Panic’s Coda uses the same method of connecting to EC2 instances as I described previously here.

In short:

Edit your ~/.ssh/config file (or create one if you don’t already have it) and add an entry that looks like this (variable areas are marked like this {variable})

Host {the shortcut name that you want to use to connect to the instance}
User {the user you will connect with, for instance root}

Port 22 Hostname {host name or ip address} IdentityFile {location of your private key file, for example ~/.ssh/id_rsa-gsg-keypair} TCPKeepAlive yes IdentitiesOnly yes

And thats it, you should be able to connect to your instance (or any server you have private-key authentication setup on) with Transmit. Simply use the shortcut name that you entered after “host” in the server field in the transmit connection screen and leave the password and user fields blank. MAKE SURE that you are using sftp and that you have poked a hole in the firewall on port 22 with the ec2 tools (ec2-authorize -p 22).

I did want to mention that there is one gotcha laying in wait, Coda will force the host to lower case, so you will need to enter the host in the .ssh/config file as lower case or the it will not find the entry.

May 8th, 2010 - Posted in ec2, Web-Dev | | 0 Comments

EC2: mounting EBS in CentOS

I’m writing this more as a future reference for myself and anyone that starts searching for specific howto stuff for ec2. The setup process is pretty well documented elsewhere, so I’m going to start into the post setup setup.

Today’s episode: Mounting your EBS in Cent:

Create your EBS (elasticfox is great for this) and link it to your instance.

Next  run-> mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb (or whatever sd* you want to use, you have to use the one you set in elasticfox)

then -> echo "/dev/sdb /vol ext3 noatime 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

then -> create the directory for vol  (mkdir /vol)

then -> mount vol (mount /vol)

Check to see that all has worked with df --si

April 18th, 2009 - Posted in ec2 | | 0 Comments

On Facebook, codeigniter and errors

When you throw an error in codeigniter, it gives you helpful little error pages. Helpful, that is, if you are building for a domain rather than building a facebook app. Those error pages will generate a decidedly un-helpful facebook errors because they have body tags (and probably other stuff that’s not going to make it through fb’s re-interpreting). The solution, though, is sweetly simple:

(fbml apps only, iframe you’re likely not having this problem)

In your errors directory change the markup for error_404, error_db, error_general and error_php to something like this

<fb:error>

<fb:message><?=$heading?></fb:message>

<?=$message?>

</fb:error>

Nothing else, just that line, and when you see that error on the facebook side it will be styled just like an error from fb itself.

January 26th, 2009 - Posted in Web-Dev | | 0 Comments

EC2: Transmit Public-Key Authentication

Post Transmit 4 Update

Transmit 4 offers this out of the box without the workaround below, simply click on the key next to the password field under the sftp tab and show Transmit where your key file resides. All done. Thanks Panic.

Original Post (Still valid for users of Transmit 3 and earlier)

Looking through the Google results it doesn’t seem that there is an entry that simply spells out how to connect to an ec2 instance with Transmit, so here it is:

Edit your ~/.ssh/config file (or create one if you don’t already have it) and add an entry that looks like this (variable areas are marked like this {variable})

Host {the shortcut name that you want to use to connect to the instance}

User {the user you will connect with, for instance root}

Port 22
Hostname {host name or ip address}
IdentityFile {location of your private key file, for example ~/.ssh/id_rsa-gsg-keypair}
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

And thats it, you should be able to connect to your instance (or any server you have private-key authentication setup on) with Transmit. Simply use the shortcut name that you entered after “host” in the server field in the transmit connection screen and leave the password and user fields blank. MAKE SURE that you are using sftp and that you have poked a hole in the firewall on port 22 with the ec2 tools (ec2-authorize -p 22).

January 17th, 2009 - Posted in ec2 | | 1 Comments