title: Recovering lost AWS EC2 Key Pairs
body: <p>AWS rookie here. I created a few EC2 instances under my AWS account and reused the same Key Pair for all of them. I <em>believe</em> (IIRC) that I had generated the Key Pair from inside AWS, but that could be wrong.</p>
  
  <p>Over this past weekend I sold my old laptop (after completely wiping the hard disk) and got a new one. I'm just remembering now (<code>:facepalm</code>) that I forgot to copy all my SSH private keys to a flash drive and that I no longer have them.</p>
  
  <p>All I want/need to do is to SSH into my EC2 instances, but to do that I need my SSH keys. I still have AWS console access, and I can log in and view all my EC2 Key Pairs. But I don't see any options for downloading them or updating my EC2 instances with new Key Pairs.</p>
  
  <p><strong>So I ask:</strong></p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Is it possible for me to recover my existing Key Pairs somehow so that I can SSH into my EC2 instances? Again I can log into the AWS console. <em>If not, then...</em></li>
  <li>Is it possible to generate another Key Pair and "swap it out" for my existing Key Pair?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I really don't want to have to tear down my old EC2 instances and re-provision new ones, that will take about a week for me to do (although, arguably, it would serve me right!).</p>