Resolving the Permission denied error when connecting to a VM created with Terraform

Issue descriptionIssue description

Trying to connect to a VM over SSH after creating that VM using Terraform returns the Permission denied error.

SolutionSolution

If you provide a key within ssh-keys, the text specified in the SSH key comment will not be processed. As a result, the key will be assigned to the user set as default in the cloud-init configuration for this image.

If you need to add a user with a specific name when creating your VM, provide the user metadata file as a cloud-init-compatible YAML, adding the metadata file path to the Terraform manifest:

1. Create a UTF-8-encoded text file with the following contents:

   #cloud-config
   users:
     - name: <username>
       groups: sudo
       shell: /bin/bash
       sudo: 'ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL'
       ssh_authorized_keys:
         - ssh-ed25519 AAAAB3Nza......OjbSMRX user@example.com
         - ssh-ed25519 AAAAB3Nza......Pu00jRN user@desktop
   

2. In the metadata section inside your Terraform manifest, specify the following:

   metadata = {
       user-data = "${file("<file_path>")}"
   }
   

You can look up the details about the user and the key in the serial port output for the created VM. If the SSH key is valid, the output should include the following:

ci-info: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Authorized keys from /home/test/.ssh/authorized_keys for user ubuntu++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ci-info: +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+----------------------+
ci-info: | Keytype |                                       Fingerprint (sha256)                                      | Options |       Comment        |
ci-info: +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+----------------------+
ci-info: | ssh-rsa | 7f:fa:ab:5c:b5:67:6b:4a:65:1e:65:bb:93:13:0b:0b:d2:06:52:63:bf:ed:c6:16:4d:55:b6:fb:c5:a2:30:f0 |    -    | some_text            |
ci-info: +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+----------------------+

Where ubuntu is the username, and ssh-rsa is the SSH key fingerprint.