AWS - Disconnected : No supported authentication m

Question

SSH to my AWS server just broke for both Putty and Filezilla. I'm making some effort for this post to be a comprehensive troubleshooting list, so if you share links to other stack overflow pages, I'll edit them into the question.

Disconnected : No supported authentication methods available (server sent :publickey)

The error is familiar from when I set up the connection almost a year ago. If you're setting up AWS SSH for the first time, these address the most common problems:

• Wrong username: Disconnected : No supported authentication methods available (server sent :publickey)
• Incorrect .ppk file: Unable to connect to amazon server using putty

However, the only thing I could think that would impact a previously working system is:

• Wrong IP: Restarting an AWS instance (or creating an image) is not guaranteed to keep the same IP address. This would obviously have to be updated in putty.

What other possibilities are there?

Solution to this one (per the accepted post below) is that for AWS EC2 all 3 of these need to have proper permissions (777 not ok for any of these). Here's one example that works:

/home/ec2-user/ - 700
/home/ec2-user/.ssh/ - 600
/home/ec2-user/.ssh/authorized_keys - 600

/var/log/secure will tell you which one is throwing an error, consult this video tutorial to get access if you're completely locked out: http://d2930476l2fsmh.cloudfront.net/LostKeypairRecoveryOfLinuxInstance.mp4

Answer 1

Based on multiple instances, if the key file and username are correct, this seems to occur when changing certain directory permissions associated with the root user.

Answer 2

For me, I just had to tell FileZilla where the private keys were:

1. Select Edit > Settings from the main menu
2. In the Settings dialog box, go to Connection > SFTP
3. Click the "Add key file..." button
4. Navigate to and then select the desired PEM file(s)

Answer 3

I am using OpsWorks and wanted to register a new existing Linux instance from my Windows machine on AWS Cli.

Frist problem was, that I had to use my Putty generated .pkk file.

Second problem was that I needed to quote the absolute path to that .pkk file like that:

aws opsworks register --infrastructure-class ec2 --ssh-username ec2-user --ssh-private-key "C:\key.ppk"

Answer 4

In my case the problem was that the ppk file was placed in %USERPROFILE%\Downloads instead of %USERPROFILE%.ssh folder.

After I moved the file, the problem disappeared.

Answer 5

PuTTY does not natively support the private key format (.pem) generated by Amazon EC2. PuTTY has a tool named PuTTYgen, which can convert keys to the required PuTTY format (.ppk). You must convert your private key into this format (.ppk) before attempting to connect to your instance using PuTTY.

The steps how to perform this are described here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/putty.html

This solved the problem.

Answer 6

While trying to connect to a SiteGround server via Putty I had the same problem. Their instructions are pretty thorough, and must work for some people, but didn't work for me.

They recommend running pageant.exe, which runs in the background. You register your key(s) with Pageant, and it's supposed to let Putty know about the keys when it tries to connect.

In a couple of places I found suggestions to specify the key directly in the Putty session definition: Putty Configuration > Connection > SSH > Auth > "Private key file for authentication", then browse to your key file in .ppk format.

Doing this without running Pageant resolved the problem for me.