Permission denied publickey when SSH Access to Amazon EC2 instance

Question

I want to use my Amazon ec2 instance but faced the following error    Permission denied  publickey     I have created my key pair and downloaded  pem file   Given                  chmod  600 pem file    Then  this command  ssh -i  home kashif serverkey pem  ubuntu ec2-54-227-242-179 compute-1 amazonaws com   But have this error   Permission denied  publickey    Also  how can I connect with filezilla to upload download files

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same thing happened to me  but all that was happening is that the private key got lost from the keychain on my local machine      ssh-add -K    re-added the key  then the ssh command to connect returned to work

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This error message means you failed to authenticate    These are common reasons that can cause that    Trying to connect with the wrong key  Are you sure this instance is using this keypair  Trying to connect with the wrong username  ubuntu is the username for the ubuntu based AWS distribution  but on some others it s ec2-user  or admin on some Debians  according to Bogdan Kulbida s answer  can also be root  fedora  see below   Trying to connect the wrong host  Is that the right host you are trying to log in to    Note that 1  will also happen if you have messed up the  home  lt username gt   ssh authorized keys file on your EC2 instance    About 2   the information about which username you should use is often lacking from the AMI Image description  But you can find some in AWS EC2 documentation  bullet point 4     http   docs aws amazon com AWSEC2 latest UserGuide AccessingInstancesLinux html     Use the ssh command to connect to the instance  You ll specify the private key   pem  file and user name public dns name  For Amazon Linux  the user name is ec2-user  For RHEL5  the user name is either root or ec2-user  For Ubuntu  the user name is ubuntu  For Fedora  the user name is either fedora or ec2-user  For SUSE Linux  the user name is root  Otherwise  if ec2-user and root don t work  check with your AMI provider    Finally  be aware that there are many other reasons why authentication would fail  SSH is usually pretty explicit about what went wrong if you care to add the -v option to your SSH command and read the output  as explained in many other answers to this question

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I m in Windows with WinSCP  It works great on both File Explorer and PuTTY SSH Shell to access my Amazon EC2-VPC Linux  There is nothing to do with chmod pem file as it uses myfile ppk converted by PuTTYgen from the pem file

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I struggled with the same permission denied error apparently due to   key parse private2  missing begin marker    In my situation the cause was the ssh config file of the current user     ssh config    Using the following   ssh -i   myKey pem ec2-user  lt IP address gt  -v  exit    The initial output showed   debug1  Reading configuration data  home ec2-user  ssh config debug1  Reading configuration data  etc ssh ssh config debug1   etc ssh ssh config line 56  Applying options for   debug1  Hostname has changed  re-reading configuration debug1  Reading configuration data  home ec2-user  ssh config debug1  Reading configuration data  etc ssh ssh config        many debug lines cut here      debug1  Next authentication method  publickey debug1  Trying private key   home ec2-user somekey pem debug1  key parse private2  missing begin marker debug1  read PEM private key done  type RSA debug1  Authentications that can continue  publickey debug1  No more authentication methods to try    The third line above is where the problem actual was identified  however  I looked for at the debug message four lines from the bottom  above  and was misled  There isn t a problem with the key but I tested it and compared other configurations   My user ssh config file reset the host via an unintended global setting as shown below  The first Host line should not have been a comment     cat config StrictHostKeyChecking no  Host myAlias         user ec2-user         Hostname bitbucket org          IdentityFile    ssh somekey          IdentitiesOnly yes  Host my2ndAlias         user myOtherUser         Hostname bitbucket org         IdentityFile    ssh my2ndKey         IdentitiesOnly yes   I hope someone else finds this helpful

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This issue can be solved by login into Ubuntu box using below command   ssh -i ec2key pem ubuntu ec2-public-IP

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This is how I solved the problem  ssh -i  lt key gt  ec2-user  lt ec2 ip gt

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In this case the problem arises from lost Key Pair  About this    There s no way to change Key Pair on an instance  You have to create a new instance that uses a new Key Pair  You can work around the problem if your instance is used by an application on Elastic Beanstalk    You can follow these steps    Access to AWS Management Console Open Elastic Beanstalk Tab Select your application from All Applications Tab From left side men   select Configuration Click on the Instances Gear In Server Form check the EC2 Key Pair input and select your new Key Pair  You may have to refresh the list in order to see a new Key Pair you re just created  Save Elastic Beanstalk will create for you new instances associated with the new key pair      In general  remember you have to allow your EC2 instance to accept inbound SSH traffic   To do this  you have to create a specific rule for the Security Group of your EC2 instance  You can follow these steps    Access to AWS Management Console Open EC2 Tab From Instances list select the instance you are interested in In the Description Tab chek the name of the Security Group your instance is using  Again in Description Tab click on View rules and check if your Security Group has a rule for inbound ssh traffic on port 22 If not  in Network  amp  Security men   select Security Group Select the Security Group used by your instance and the click Inbound Tab On the left of Inbound Tab you can compose a rule for SSH inbound traffic   Create a new rule  SSH Source  IP address or subnetwork from which you want access to instance Note  If you want grant unlimited access to your instance you can specify 0 0 0 0 0  although Amazon not recommend this practice  Click Add Rule and then Apply Your Changes Check if you re now able to connect to your instance via SSH    Hope this can help someone as helped me

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My private key was set to permission 400 and was resulting in Permission denied setting it to  644  helped me    key load private type  Permission denied is the specific error I was getting  Solution  Sudo chmod 644  lt key pem gt   Note  set to 644 is must  it was not working with 400

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for the ubuntu 12 04 lts micro instance i had to set the user name as option   ssh -i pemfile pem -l ubuntu dns

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I was able to SSH from one machine  but not from another  Turns out I was using the wrong private key   The way I figured this out was by getting the public key from my private key  like this   ssh-keygen -y -f   myprivatekey pem  What came out didn t match what was in    ssh authorized keys on the EC2 instance

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When you try doing   ssh -i  lt  pem path gt  root ec2-public-dns   You get a message advising you to use the ec2-user    Please login as the user  ec2-user  rather than the user  root     So use  ssh -i  lt  pem path gt  ec2-user ec2-public-dns

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Another Possible Issue  Wrong login ID  Check  Usage Instructions   All good suggestions above  but what I ran into was that I selected a pre-made instance  After the instance has started   look at the usage instructions  I incorrectly used login id of the private key when in the instructions I was supposed to use  bitnami   e g  bitnami domain -i key pem

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I had similar error  debug1  Authentications that can continue  publickey debug1  Next authentication method  publickey debug1  Trying private key  xxxx pem debug1  Authentications that can continue  publickey debug1  No more authentication methods to try  Permission denied  publickey     My problem was that the instance did not start properly due to error on the run-on-start-up script from Step 3  Configure instance detail under Advanced details   What I thought I entered    include  https   xxxx bootstrap sh   What actually entered breaks the instance setup   include    https   xxxx bootstrap sh  So the public key on instance side was not created

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It s a basic thing  but always confirm which user you are trying to do the login  Im my case was just a distraction  I was trying using a root user   ssh -i   keys  lt key name gt  root 111 111 111 111   But was another user   ssh -i   keys  lt key name gt  dedeco 111 111 111 111

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I ve twice had keys and ssh command line correct  I know because I m duplicating a working Ubuntu 14 04 instance   but just not been able to ssh into a new instance  even after waiting 5 minutes as suggested by Wade Anderson above   I had to destroy and re-create the machine   This has happened on two separate occasions   Since I can t get in initially  I can t see what s wrong   So  if you have this problem  try that

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It s case sensitive    Wrong     SSH EC2-user XXX XX XX XX -i MyEC2KeyPair pem  Correct   SSH ec2-user XXX XX XX XX -i MyEC2KeyPair pem

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All of the top ranked answers above are accurate and should work for most cases  In the event that they don t as was in my case  I simply got rid of my    ssh known hosts file on the machine I was trying to ssh from and that solved the problem for me  I was able to connect afterwards

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Another possible cause of this error   When user s home directory is group writeable  the user cannot login    Reproduced on Ubuntu instance

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You need to do the following steps    Open your ssh client or terminal if you are using Linux   Locate your private key file and change your directory       cd  lt path to your  pem file gt  Execute below commands  chmod 400  lt filename gt  pem  ssh -i  lt filename gt  pem ubuntu  lt ipaddress com gt     If ubuntu user is not working then try with ec2-user

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Try using  sudo ssh -i mykey pem ubuntu  lt ec2 ip public dns gt    OR  sudo ssh -i mykey pem ec2-user  lt ec2 ip public dns gt

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In my own case  i did the following   chmod 400  lt key pem gt   ssh -i  lt key pem gt  ec2-user ec2 public dns  for debian    I was initially using root  part and i got this prompt   Please login as the user  ec2-user  rather than the user  root

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I struggled with this for a while too until I found the following   eb ssh   When you use that from the project directory  bingo-bango no muss no fuss  you re in

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I solved the problem just putting sudo before  sudo ssh -i mykey pem myec2 amazonaws com   But the proper solution is to change the ownership first  and then connect as a normal user as Janus Troelsen said below  In my case it would be   chown wellington wellington key pem

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This has happened to me multiple times  I have used Amazon Linux AMI 2013 09 2 and Ubuntu Server 12 04 3 LTS which are both on the free tier    Every time I have launched an instance I have permission denied show up  I haven t verified this but my theory is that the server is not completely set up before I try to ssh into it  After a few tries with permission denied  I wait a few minutes and then I am able to connect  If you are having this problem I suggest waiting five minutes and trying again

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I forgot to add the username  ubuntu  when connecting my Ubuntu instance  So I tried this   ssh -i  path my-key-pair pem my-ec2-instance amazonaws com   and the correct way was  ssh -i  path my-key-pair pem ubuntu my-ec2-instance amazonaws com

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i had same error but different situation  to me it happened out of the blue after a lot of time i could ssh successfully to my remote computer out there  after a lot of searching the solution to my problem were file permissions  it is strange of course because i didn t change any permissions in my computer or the remote one belonging to the ssh s files directories  so from the good archlinux wiki here it is    For the local machine do this     chmod 700      chmod 700    ssh   chmod 600    ssh id ecdsa   For the remote machine do that     chmod 700      chmod 700    ssh   chmod 600    ssh authorized keys   after that my ssh started to working again without the permission denied  publickey  thing

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Here is a possible frustrating scenarios that produces this error   If you are lunching a new instance from an AMI you created of another instance  say instance xyz   then the new instance will only accept the same key that instance A used  This is totally understandable but it gets confusing because during the step by step process of creating the new instance  you are asked to select or create a key  at the very last step  which will not work    Regardless of the key you create or select  only the key you were using for instance XYZ will will be accepted by the new instance

User · Answer

I had same problem and its very strange  If you believe you are doing all good than follow this  Some times there is confusion about user for the EC2 instance   Some times you get ec2-user  ubuntu  centos etc  So check your username for the machie    Login with root user  ssh -i yourkey pem  400 permission  root  lt ip gt   It will throw error and will give you the available username  then login with that user

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you must check these few things    Make sure your IP address is correct  Make sure you are using the correct Key Make sure you are using the correct username  you can try  3 1  admin 3 2  ec2-user 3 3  ubuntu   I had the same problem  and it solved after I changed username to ubuntu  In AWS documentation was mentioned to user ec2-user but somehow does not work for me

[amazon-web-services] Permission denied (publickey) when SSH Access to Amazon EC2 instance

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