SSH 'Permission Denied (publickey)' Explained: Common Causes and How to Fix Them
The SSH error 'Permission denied (publickey)' means the network connection succeeded but the server rejected the user's authentication key, not a firewall or connectivity issue. The most frequent cause is incorrect file permissions on the server's ~/.ssh directory or authorized_keys file, which must be set to 700 and 600 respectively, or the server silently ignores them. Users can diagnose the problem by running SSH with the -vvv verbose flag to see whether their key is being offered and rejected, or not loaded at all. Mismatched key pairs, an empty SSH agent, or a forgotten public key upload are also common culprits that can be resolved using ssh-add or ssh-copy-id. AWS users face additional pitfalls, including using the wrong default username for their AMI and attempting to connect with a key pair different from the one assigned at instance launch.
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