Creating EC2 keypairs with AWS CLI

It is easy to create EC2 keypairs with the AWS CLI:

$ aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name mynewkeypair > keystuff.json

After creating the keypair it should appear in your EC2 key pairs listing. The keystuff.json file will contain the RSA private key you will need to use to connect to any instances you create with the keypair, as well as the name of the key and its fingerprint.

{
    "KeyMaterial": "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n<your private key>==\n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----",
    "KeyName": "mynewkeypair",
    "KeyFingerprint": "53:47:ee:01:3a:35:9b:52:1c:4f:99:6f:87:b0:0f:8b:ed:83:55:3b"
}

To extract the private key into a separate file, use the jq JSON filter.

$ jq '.KeyMaterial' keystuff.json --raw > mynewkey.pem