Appendix: Help getting files on and off Amazon AWS EC2 instances¶
SCP¶
Limited to linux/Unix/Mac systems, but very straighforward.
Example that worked in the terminal on my Mac to download from my Amazon instance (back when public DNS/hostname formatted like ec2-50-19-16-34.compute-1.amazonaws.com).
scp -i workshop.pem ubuntu@ec2-50-19-16-34.compute-1.amazonaws.com:/usr/workshop/sc3.db .
The key is workshop.pem
. And
ec2-50-19-16-34.compute-1.amazonaws.com
was my current instance
hostname. The .
specified to download the file sc3.db
to the
current working directory.
For newer Amazon EC2 instances (Summer 2015 forward–>), that command will look more like
scp -i workshop.pem ubuntu@54.86.18.122:/usr/workshop/sc3.db .
Where 54.86.18.122
is the public IP address of the instance.
WARNING: You may observe errors like
scp: /root/my_directory/genome.fa: Permission denied
if you try to
download/upload to places without proper permissions. Check the
permissions (command ls -l
) for learning which directories you can
read and write to on your instance for using scp to upload/download, see
here for interpreting
the codes. (Basically you want r
for downloading and w
for
uploading to be among the six characters on the right). For example, you
cannot read or write direct to root
. Aside from root
, most
directories created by the instance at creation, even those below
root
allow reading which makes downloading from most directories to
a local drive possible using scp
. Tip: for Amazon EC2 instances
there is a tmp
directory that allows both reading and writing. For
uploading to your instance you can use that tmp
as a target to go
from your local machine to your instance. Then once uploaded, move the
file or files to a more logical place within your instance.
See also:
SFTP¶
Most likely best choice if you are on Windows.
Pay attention to the user name. You want ubuntu
for Ubuntu
instances. Those links below should also provide information if you
happen to be using other types of AWS EC2 instances. Be sure to read the
comments too. They often give you nice pointers when you are
troubleshooting.
with FileZilla¶
- Example on Windows PC
- Example on Mac with more information at Yasitha Chinthaka’s post here
- Another take on this is here
with cyberduck¶
Dropbox¶
Looks like it still works since in 2014 course info
http://angus.readthedocs.org/en/2014/amazon/installing-dropbox.html
BUT BE WARY!!!
IMPORTANT: Dropbox will sync everything you have to your EC2 machine, so if you are already using Dropbox for a lot of stuff, you might want to create a separate Dropbox account just for the course.