create-key-pair¶

Description¶

Creates an ED25519 or 2048-bit RSA key pair with the specified name and in the specified PEM or PPK format. Amazon EC2 stores the public key and displays the private key for you to save to a file. The private key is returned as an unencrypted PEM encoded PKCS#1 private key or an unencrypted PPK formatted private key for use with PuTTY. If a key with the specified name already exists, Amazon EC2 returns an error.

The key pair returned to you is available only in the Amazon Web Services Region in which you create it. If you prefer, you can create your own key pair using a third-party tool and upload it to any Region using ImportKeyPair .

You can have up to 5,000 key pairs per Amazon Web Services Region.

For more information, see Amazon EC2 key pairs in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide .

Synopsis¶

  create-key-pair
--key-name <value>
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--key-type <value>]
[--tag-specifications <value>]
[--key-format <value>]
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

Options¶

--key-name (string)

A unique name for the key pair.

Constraints: Up to 255 ASCII characters

--dry-run | --no-dry-run (boolean)

Checks whether you have the required permissions for the action, without actually making the request, and provides an error response. If you have the required permissions, the error response is DryRunOperation . Otherwise, it is UnauthorizedOperation .

--key-type (string)

The type of key pair. Note that ED25519 keys are not supported for Windows instances.

Default: rsa

Possible values:

rsa

ed25519

--tag-specifications (list)

The tags to apply to the new key pair.

(structure)

The tags to apply to a resource when the resource is being created.

ResourceType -> (string)

The type of resource to tag on creation.

Tags -> (list)

The tags to apply to the resource.

(structure)

Describes a tag.

Key -> (string)

The key of the tag.

Constraints: Tag keys are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 127 Unicode characters. May not begin with aws: .

Value -> (string)

The value of the tag.

Constraints: Tag values are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 256 Unicode characters.

Shorthand Syntax:

ResourceType=string,Tags=[{Key=string,Value=string},{Key=string,Value=string}] ...

JSON Syntax:

[
  {
    "ResourceType": "capacity-reservation"|"client-vpn-endpoint"|"customer-gateway"|"carrier-gateway"|"dedicated-host"|"dhcp-options"|"egress-only-internet-gateway"|"elastic-ip"|"elastic-gpu"|"export-image-task"|"export-instance-task"|"fleet"|"fpga-image"|"host-reservation"|"image"|"import-image-task"|"import-snapshot-task"|"instance"|"instance-event-window"|"internet-gateway"|"ipam"|"ipam-pool"|"ipam-scope"|"ipv4pool-ec2"|"ipv6pool-ec2"|"key-pair"|"launch-template"|"local-gateway"|"local-gateway-route-table"|"local-gateway-virtual-interface"|"local-gateway-virtual-interface-group"|"local-gateway-route-table-vpc-association"|"local-gateway-route-table-virtual-interface-group-association"|"natgateway"|"network-acl"|"network-interface"|"network-insights-analysis"|"network-insights-path"|"network-insights-access-scope"|"network-insights-access-scope-analysis"|"placement-group"|"prefix-list"|"replace-root-volume-task"|"reserved-instances"|"route-table"|"security-group"|"security-group-rule"|"snapshot"|"spot-fleet-request"|"spot-instances-request"|"subnet"|"subnet-cidr-reservation"|"traffic-mirror-filter"|"traffic-mirror-session"|"traffic-mirror-target"|"transit-gateway"|"transit-gateway-attachment"|"transit-gateway-connect-peer"|"transit-gateway-multicast-domain"|"transit-gateway-route-table"|"volume"|"vpc"|"vpc-endpoint"|"vpc-endpoint-service"|"vpc-peering-connection"|"vpn-connection"|"vpn-gateway"|"vpc-flow-log",
    "Tags": [
      {
        "Key": "string",
        "Value": "string"
      }
      ...
    ]
  }
  ...
]

--key-format (string)

The format of the key pair.

Default: pem

Possible values:

pem

ppk

--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml (string) Reads arguments from the JSON string provided. The JSON string follows the format provided by --generate-cli-skeleton. If other arguments are provided on the command line, those values will override the JSON-provided values. It is not possible to pass arbitrary binary values using a JSON-provided value as the string will be taken literally. This may not be specified along with --cli-input-yaml.

--generate-cli-skeleton (string) Prints a JSON skeleton to standard output without sending an API request. If provided with no value or the value input, prints a sample input JSON that can be used as an argument for --cli-input-json. Similarly, if provided yaml-input it will print a sample input YAML that can be used with --cli-input-yaml. If provided with the value output, it validates the command inputs and returns a sample output JSON for that command.

See ‘aws help’ for descriptions of global parameters.

Examples¶

To create a key pair

This example creates a key pair named MyKeyPair.

Command:

aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name MyKeyPair

The output is an ASCII version of the private key and key fingerprint. You need to save the key to a file.

For more information, see Using Key Pairs in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Output¶

KeyFingerprint -> (string)

For RSA key pairs, the key fingerprint is the SHA-1 digest of the DER encoded private key.

For ED25519 key pairs, the key fingerprint is the base64-encoded SHA-256 digest, which is the default for OpenSSH, starting with OpenSSH 6.8.

KeyMaterial -> (string)

An unencrypted PEM encoded RSA or ED25519 private key.

KeyName -> (string)

The name of the key pair.

KeyPairId -> (string)

The ID of the key pair.

Tags -> (list)

Any tags applied to the key pair.

(structure)

Describes a tag.

Key -> (string)

The key of the tag.

Constraints: Tag keys are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 127 Unicode characters. May not begin with aws: .

Value -> (string)

The value of the tag.

Constraints: Tag values are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 256 Unicode characters.

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