AWS OpsWorks SSH Permission denied (publickey)
To deploy an instance of a Rails application to AWS OpsWorks, I must define an SSH key for the instance. I followed the steps given in the help page: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/opsworks/latest/userguide/workinginstances-ssh.html#workinginstances-ssh-third
- I created a key pair and downloaded the file
.pem
: AWSRails.pem - I changed the
chmod
file to 600 - On the stack page, I added the default SSH key to the previously generated one (step 1)
- In the instance page I get the public DNS name: ec2-54-72-154-78.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com
- On the same page I get Operating System: Amazon Linux
-
In the terminal, I tried to establish an ssh connection to the instance:
ssh -v -i ~ / Downloads / AWSRails.pem ec2-user@ec2-54-72-154-78.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com
I had the following output:
OpenSSH_6.2p2, OSSLShim 0.9.8r 8 Dec 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 102: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to ec2-54-72-154-78.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com [54.72.154.78] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file AWSRails.pem type -1
debug1: identity file AWSRails.pem-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.2
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.2
debug1: match: OpenSSH_6.2 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: RSA f0:52:63:a5:cf:d9:62:bc:f7:b9:f9:04:a7:05:93:5e
debug1: Host 'ec2-54-72-154-78.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /Users/Hassen/.ssh/known_hosts:12
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: Roaming not allowed by server
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: /Users/Hassen/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: AWSRails.pem
debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
Permission denied (publickey).
Reading the debug message, communication has been established and everything is working fine until the authentication method is published. I tried many of the same problems as on StackOverflow but none worked.
Do you have any ideas? Thank.
Two possible solutions:
-
Do you have SSH enabled for your user? Check your permissions (from the IIRC dashboard). If it's just you on the stack, then you probably already have permissions, but I know I should have enabled it by adding members to my development team. See AWS OpsWorks on SSH page for details
-
All my scripts "ssh to OpsWorks instances" always do
ssh add-key ec2-keypair.pem
before trying to SSH. I believe this is the key given to you during the initial stack creation ??? or something? Anyway, if you have this key, give it a tryssh add-key
. It can also depend on how you set up your OpsWorks (private keys or one default key) ...
Its worth checking if the username is what you expect from it. I had the exact same error and it was because I was using Ubuntu instances and not Amazon Linux, but that might not be the only reason for a different username.
Opsworks consoles. The SSH login page offers userexamplecom
an SSH username for the AWS / IAM user with user@example.com
as login. But for Ubuntu its ubuntu
, Amazon Linux or Red Hat for it ec2-user
, and Debian for admin
. More details here (I haven't used all of this personally).
The good advice from the linked article is to try:
$ ssh root@hostname
How some systems will react to something like:
Please login as the user "ubuntu" rather than the user "root".