get-password-data¶

Description¶

Retrieves the encrypted administrator password for a running Windows instance.

The Windows password is generated at boot by the EC2Config service or EC2Launch scripts (Windows Server 2016 and later). This usually only happens the first time an instance is launched. For more information, see EC2Config and EC2Launch in the Amazon EC2 User Guide .

For the EC2Config service, the password is not generated for rebundled AMIs unless Ec2SetPassword is enabled before bundling.

The password is encrypted using the key pair that you specified when you launched the instance. You must provide the corresponding key pair file.

When you launch an instance, password generation and encryption may take a few minutes. If you try to retrieve the password before it’s available, the output returns an empty string. We recommend that you wait up to 15 minutes after launching an instance before trying to retrieve the generated password.

Synopsis¶

  get-password-data
--instance-id <value>
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--priv-launch-key <value>]
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

Options¶

--instance-id (string)

The ID of the Windows instance.

--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 .

--priv-launch-key (string)

The file that contains the private key used to launch the instance (e.g. windows-keypair.pem). If this is supplied, the password data sent from EC2 will be decrypted before display.

--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. The generated JSON skeleton is not stable between versions of the AWS CLI and there are no backwards compatibility guarantees in the JSON skeleton generated.

See ‘aws help’ for descriptions of global parameters.

Examples¶

Note

To use the following examples, you must have the AWS CLI installed and configured. See the Getting started guide in the AWS CLI User Guide for more information.

Unless otherwise stated, all examples have unix-like quotation rules. These examples will need to be adapted to your terminal’s quoting rules. See Using quotation marks with strings in the AWS CLI User Guide .

To get the encrypted password

This example gets the encrypted password.

Command:

aws ec2 get-password-data --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0

Output:

{
    "InstanceId": "i-1234567890abcdef0",
    "Timestamp": "2013-08-07T22:18:38.000Z",
    "PasswordData": "gSlJFq+VpcZXqy+iktxMF6NyxQ4qCrT4+gaOuNOenX1MmgXPTj7XEXAMPLE
UQ+YeFfb+L1U4C4AKv652Ux1iRB3CPTYP7WmU3TUnhsuBd+p6LVk7T2lKUml6OXbk6WPW1VYYm/TRPB1
e1DQ7PY4an/DgZT4mwcpRFigzhniQgDDeO1InvSDcwoUTwNs0Y1S8ouri2W4n5GNlriM3Q0AnNVelVz/
53TkDtxbNoU606M1gK9zUWSxqEgwvbV2j8c5rP0WCuaMWSFl4ziDu4bd7q+4RSyi8NUsVWnKZ4aEZffu
DPGzKrF5yLlf3etP2L4ZR6CvG7K1hx7VKOQVN32Dajw=="
}

To get the decrypted password

This example gets the decrypted password.

Command:

aws ec2 get-password-data --instance-id  i-1234567890abcdef0 --priv-launch-key C:\Keys\MyKeyPair.pem

Output:

{
    "InstanceId": "i-1234567890abcdef0",
    "Timestamp": "2013-08-30T23:18:05.000Z",
    "PasswordData": "&ViJ652e*u"
}

Output¶

InstanceId -> (string)

The ID of the Windows instance.

PasswordData -> (string)

The password of the instance. Returns an empty string if the password is not available.

Timestamp -> (timestamp)

The time the data was last updated.

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