 <p>You are likely using the wrong username to login:</p> <ul> <li>most Ubuntu images have a user <code>ubuntu</code></li> <li>Amazon's AMI is <code>ec2-user</code></li> <li>most Debian images have either <code>root</code> or <code>admin</code></li> </ul> <p>To login, you need to adjust your ssh command:</p> <pre><code>ssh -l USERNAME_HERE -i .ssh/yourkey.pem public-ec2-host </code></pre> <p>HTH</p>