Troubleshooting SSH

A “Permission denied” error means that the server rejected your connection. There could be several reasons why, and the most common ones are explained below.

Check the SSH key in use

You can get more details about which key is being used by adding the “verbose” flag -v to your SSH command:

ssh -v YOUR_SERVICE@ssh.YOUR_REGION.render.com
[...]
debug1: identity file /Users/YOUR_NAME/.ssh/id_ed25519 type 3
debug1: identity file /Users/YOUR_NAME/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert type -1
[...]
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /Users/YOUR_NAME/.ssh/id_ed25519
[...]
Permission denied (publickey).

Check the key attached to your Render account

  1. List any keys you have loaded into the ssh-agent.

    ssh-add -l

    This should should print out a long string of numbers and letters.

    256 SHA256:SSH_KEY_FINGERPRINT YOUR_NAME@YOUR_HOST (ED25519)
  2. Open your settings page in the Dashboard and find the list of SSH public keys.

  3. Compare the list of SSH keys with the output from the ssh-add command.

If you don’t see your public key listed, you can add it to your account.