Amazon EC2 ssh login failure

Question

I am trying to login to my instance on EC2 and I have so far been unsuccessful. I provide the output of all relevant commands and things I've tried. I've done my homework and looked around, I still cant explain why I am unable to login.

The keypair was generated online using amazons AWS console and I downloaded the private file locally. Its chmod'ed to 600.

$ ec2-describe-keypairs 
KEYPAIR gsg-keypair bb:ac:f0:5f:5b:c8:24:47:16:a8:93:35:37:1c:b3:c3:84:68:80:e1

$ ec2-run-instances ami-8d18f5e4 -k gsg-keypair
INSTANCE    i-2dcea041  ami-8d18f5e4            pending gsg-keypair 0   m1.small    2011-02-09T10:50:50+0000    us-east-1c  aki-a71cf9ce    ari-a51cf9cc        monitoring-disabled                 instance-store              xen 

$ ec2-describe instances
INSTANCE    i-2dcea041  ami-8d18f5e4    ec2-75-101-249-242.compute-1.amazonaws.com  domU-12-31-39-00-5D-D2.compute-1.internal   running gsg-keypair 0       m1.smal2011-02-09T10:50:50+0000 us-east-1c  aki-a71cf9ce    ari-a51cf9cc        monitoring-disabled 75.101.249.242  10.254.98.32            instance-store  

I have also run successfully ec2-authorize default -p 22.

The output from ssh is:

$ ssh -v -i id_rsa-gsg-keypair root@ec2-75-101-249-242.compute-1.amazonaws.com
OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-6ubuntu2, OpenSSL 0.9.8g 19 Oct 2007
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config  
debug1: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to ec2-75-101-249-242.compute-1.amazonaws.com [75.101.249.242] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file id_rsa-gsg-keypair type -1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5
debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-6ubuntu2
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
The authenticity of host 'ec2-75-101-249-242.compute-1.amazonaws.com (75.101.249.242)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is d0:ae:58:59:88:b8:58:ae:ab:dc:6f:a0:14:d5:f2:51.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts (/home/meh/.ssh/known_hosts).
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: id_rsa-gsg-keypair
debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
Permission denied (publickey).

Any help would be greatly appreciated here. I've tried a million things and still cannot figure out what is going on.

thanks.

Answer 1

You might have a permissions error:

Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts (/home/meh/.ssh/known_hosts)

Make sure your user account has write access to the file /home/meh/.ssh/known_hosts

Answer 2

Also you'll want to use the user 'ubuntu'. See pmagunia's write-up here for more details:

stackoverflow similar question