Trying to SSH into an Amazon Ec2 instance - permission error

Question

This is probably a stupidly simple question to some :)

I\'ve created a new linux instance on Amazon EC2, and as part of that downloaded the .pem file to allow me to

Answer 1

Checklist:

1. Are you using the right private key .pem file?

2. Are its permissions set correctly? (My Amazon-brand AMIs work with 644, but Red hat must be at least 600 or 400. Don't know about Ubuntu.)

3. Are you using the right username in your ssh line? Amazon-branded = "ec2-user", Red Hat = "root", Ubuntu = "ubuntu". User can be specified as "ssh -i pem usename@hostname" OR "ssh -l username -i pem hostname"