Linux SSH Config Alias Permission Denied (publickey)

Question

I have an AWS linux instance running that I'm trying to SSH into. When I type in the manual command (using mac, terminal):

ssh -i ~/.ssh/PEM.pem root@IPADDRESS

it works fine, but when I try to give that an alias in the config file in my SSH colder, such as

Host hostname
User root
IdentityFile "file"
HostName IPADDRESS

I get the error:

Permission denied (publickey).

I have other AWS aliases in my config file with the exact same setup that work fine, any ideas? Thanks.

Update I figured out what was going on here, I had a trailing whitespace at the end of my .pem location. Man is that stuff finicky.

have you looked at hosts.allow and hosts.deny? I'd also check out /var/log/secure and /var/log/messages on the AWS linux instance and see what they have to say.
Try ssh -v, it will dump a lot of information, maybe some will be useful. (-vv for even more info. :)
@Caleb, good catch. Add it as an answer and accept it, so others might be spared going nuts. :)
Also, make sure there is a 600 permission on whole .ssh and content of it

Caleb · Answer 1 · 2011-03-31 07:35:10Z

up vote 2 down vote

I figured out what was going on here, I had a trailing whitespace at the end of my .pem location. Man is that stuff finicky.

answered Mar 31 '11 at 7:35

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Mar 24 '11 at 11:38