Unable to make connection to AWS Ubuntu instance created by terraform

Question

I am using terraform 0.9.6

 provisioner "file" {
    source      = "conf/test.txt"
    destination = "/etc/test.txt"
    connection {
    user = "ubuntu"
    private_key = "${file("test.ppk")}"
    agent = "false" 
    timeout = "30s"
    }
  }

This block continuosuly gives me No key file found test.ppk error. Though the file is there in the same folder where my .tf file is there. I also tried to give absolute path C:\\test.ppk but still the issue remain the same. I am running terraform on windows. Any idea why the ppk file is not being read? Also this ppk file is passphrase protected how can I pass the passphrase for the ppk file in connection object?

Answer 1

I think your private key format is a problem. ppk is Putty private key format. Try to use pem private key format for your provisioner.

Answer 2

Your first problem is that the private keys need to be PEM encoded, you can use PuTTYGen

CLI puttygen privatekey.ppk -O private-openssh -o privatekey.pem

GUI Start PuTTYgen. Load your private key in .ppk format. Then go to Menu > Conversions > Export > OpenSSH. This creates a key in .pem format.

You're next problem is terraform $file trying to find the file itself. The path is interpreted relative to the working directory.

file(path) - Reads the contents of a file into the string. Variables in this file are not interpolated. The contents of the file are read as-is. The path is interpreted relative to the working directory. Path variables can be used to reference paths relative to other base locations. For example, when using file() from inside a module, you generally want to make the path relative to the module base, like this: file("${path.module}/file").

https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/interpolation.html#file_path_

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-key-pairs.html