Question 183646 in Amazon Web Sevices Question posted in
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Amazon web services – EC2 – Permission denied(public key) while the same key works for other instance and other user on the instance?

Everything worked great till yesterday. Today I am unable to ssh to my ec2 instance.

The settings are saved in .ssh/config.

The error I get, when using test username:

.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com: Permission denied (publickey).

I went ahead and double checked the permission on the .pem file:

-r--------

I have another ec2 running with the same .pem so I connected to it. No problem, login done.

I then tried to ssh into the problematic ec2 with ubuntu user and same .pem file. It worked I was able to login.

I then switched users and the test user exists.

I am not sure about what the issue might be.

Exited the ssh session and tried connection again using the test user and got the same error.

I found an answer here:

Same problem

But the answer is not very helpful.

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2

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    Abraam's answer is absolutely correct.

    I am detailing the steps I followed to check and change the authorized_keys in remote i.e. the EC2 instance.

    ssh using the ubuntu user:

    ssh -i "~/path/to/key-pair.pem" [email protected]

    see the entries in ubuntu authorized_keys:

    cat /home/ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_keys

    change user to test

    su test

    see the entries in test authorized_keys:

    cat /home/test/.ssh/authorized_keys

    if there is a difference and the key-pair is not present

    # copy the key entry from the ubuntu authorized_keys
nano /home/test/.ssh/authorized_keys
# new line, paste the copied authorized_key

    Save and close the file.

    ssh should work now.


  2. 0

    It might be permission issue on the .ssh directory of the test user on the remote box

    • Connect the same way with ubuntu user.
    • Compare the permissions on ssh directory of test user and all its content (authorized keys, known host, config) with the one of ubuntu user.
    • Check content of authorized_keys file in test ssh directory and make sure it matches the public key of the private key you are connecting with.
    • You can use ssh -vvv while connecting, to check if it is using the right key while connecting.
    • Final resort: tail the ssh logs while you are trying to connect with test user.
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