16.4 Connect from EC2

By Ravindra Bagale Last updated: 3 October 2026

SSH into the EC2 instance in the same VPC. Install only the client. Do not install a second database server.

# Amazon Linux 2023 — the mariadb105 package provides the mysql command
sudo yum install -y mariadb105

# Ubuntu
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y mysql-client

# CentOS Stream 9 — mariadb is the client. Do not install mariadb-server
sudo yum install -y mariadb

mysql -h appdb.abc123xyz.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com -P 3306 -u admin -p appdb

Replace the hostname with your endpoint. -p with nothing after it makes the client ask for the password, so the password is not saved in the shell history. You should get a mysql> prompt.

CREATE TABLE students (
  id INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
  name VARCHAR(40) NOT NULL,
  marks INT
);

INSERT INTO students (name, marks) VALUES ('Asha', 88), ('Rahul', 76);

SELECT * FROM students;

EXIT leaves the client. If this query works, the security group, the endpoint and the password are all correct.