ssh operation timed out on ec2 instance

Question

I am having a problem connecting with my Ubuntu 16.04 ec2 instance on aws. I have added my public key to authorized keys file and also added my ip for ssh access on port 22 using Myip.

I am trying to connect using normal way:

ssh [email protected] 

I have even rebooted my ec2 instance.

What else do I need to do to get access?

Thanks

Answer 1

Normally, to solve ssh connection issues in aws you can check the following things:

Check if your instance is up.

Allow 22 port in security group: check if the security group you have edited is assigned to instance. Also, only for test allow 0.0.0.0/0 (all ips) to 22 port.

Check if your AMI has ubuntu user, you can try with user admin too.

Check if the ip of the instance is public.

If all of this is correct, the problem probabilly will be in the pair public-private key. Look up with pair you use when you launch the instance and your default key is the rigth key.

Answer 2

I almost always find it due to either incorrect security configurations (whether that be with the security group on AWS or the security configurations on the instance itself like Nginx) or too much storage used. Once you go past around 80% storage on the instance it tends to behave erratically, most likely due to internal fragmentation. In the latter case I would recommend looking under the heading "Specify instance user data at launch" of the following link:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/user-data.html

Essentially, you will need to stop your instance, click the instance ID, actions -> instance settings -> Edit User Data. Here you will be able to add code onto the instance that could delete files, which would allow you to log on. Or, if you have security configurations with Nginx, you can delete them.

Answer 3

This could be a DNS issue. Try to put the IP address of your EC2 instance instead:

ssh -i <your_pem_key> <username>@<ip-address> 

Answer 4

option 3 if you are on a VPN and the ip is private, use an elastic ip address to make it public by associating it with the running instance

Answer 5

i was using amazon EC2 many months without issues but recently i am getting this too. i am using Google public DNS as my DNS, not sure if it is related. i am also not sure if the problem began with my new internet connection or not, i guess it worked for a while even with new internet.

Btw i tried the public IP instead of domain name and no change.

Problem also is, that you have to do many tries and one of them eventually works...

Answer 6

If you have a route table that has routes to Internet Gateway, then associate the route table with your public subnet

Answer 7

Asking Amazon Q Free Tier with query "ssh operation timed out on ec2 instance", in my case:

I've identified several potential issues causing your SSH timeout:

Security Group Issue (Most Likely):

• The security group does not have any inbound rules for SSH (port 22)
  Only allows traffic from within the same security group

Solution:

• Add an inbound rule for SSH (TCP port 22) from your IP address

To resolve this:

Add an inbound SSH rule to your security group:

• Protocol: TCP Port: 22
• Source: Your IP address/32

Additional verification steps:

• Ensure you're using the correct key pair ("<redacted>")
• Verify you're using the correct username for your OS (appears to be <redacted>)
• Check that your local IP matches the security group rule you'll add