AWS – Can’t Connect to EC2 Instance via Putty

amazon-web-servicesputty

I've got an EC2 instance running on AWS:

  1. It's an Ubuntu linux instance, and up until not long ago I used putty to access it on a regular basis – worked great.
  2. I'm using Pageant to load the .ppk file (converted it from AWS's original .pem file as per the AWS docs).
  3. I'm using these login settings:
    Putty Login Settings
  4. Checked that my securtiy group for the instance allows SSH access on port 22 from my address – it does indeed.
  5. Checked that my elastic IP did not change – it did not.
  6. Tried to login into the Public DNS instead of the IP – no cigar.
  7. Rebooted the instance and waited 15 minutes while making tea.

Having said that, I'm getting a "network error: connection timed out" error.

Putty Fatal Error

What can cause this?

Best Answer

So, It was a secuity group issue at the end.

AWS makes you include every IP you want to SSH into your server from in a special "group" of permissions to access the server. Otherwise it blocks you from enetering it. Super-good for protection on production servers, bad when accessing your dev server from cafes in the middle of nowhere.

Some more about Security Groups in the AWS Docs (Only for VPC - that's what I use)

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