Unable to SSH into my EC2 Instance Permission denied (publickey)

Hi RebelGrot,

Generally, as noted in the AWS documentation here [1], 'Permission Denied' error messages when attempting to SSH are commonly caused by either 1) incorrect username, 2) incorrect private key or 3) incorrect OS level permissions.

Since you already attempted to change the private key with no success, I would also recommend reviewing the following permissions (mount point refers to the recovery mount point you attached the volume on your temporary instance):

chmod 755 <mount_point>/home
chmod 700 <mount_point>/home/ec2-user
chmod 700 <mount_point>/home/ec2-user/.ssh
chmod 600 <mount_point>/home/ec2-user/.ssh/authorized_keys

Additionally, I would also recommend reviewing your SSH configuration file <mount_point>/etc/sshd_config.

Thanks.
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/TroubleshootingInstancesConnecting.html#TroubleshootingInstancesConnectingMindTerm

Thanks LoiyAWS! I am a bit of a newb when it comes to command line and ssh.

I am going to give these permission changes a try again. I'll check back and let you know how it goes.

Edited by: RebelGrot on Apr 24, 2019 9:30 PM

I changed the permissions and still got the result of Permission Denied (publicly). So I created a new key pair and a new recovery instance and went through the process again. This time it worked!