AWS BigIP VE SSH root login failure

Hello everyone,

 

I'm following the guide to spin up a F5 BigIP virtual appliance on an EC2 instance listed on the F5/AWS documentation page. I've launched the appliance and according to the steps I'm trying to SSH into the instance to set the admin password. But for the life of me I can't log in with the SSH key I've created the appliance with.

 

I'm using the following command:

 

$ ssh -vvv root@[internalIP or EIP] -i .ssh/sshkey.pem

 

I've tried multiple SSH keys, also ones that work on other machines, the permissions are set correctly on the key files. The security groups are open for SSH and HTTPS on the appliance. But I keep getting a Connection Closed when trying to SSH in.

 

exact error:

 

debug1: Offering RSA public key: sshkey.pem debug3: send_pubkey_test debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 279 debug2: input_userauth_pk_ok: fp xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx debug3: sign_and_send_pubkey: RSA xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Connection closed by [IP address]

 

What am i doing wrong? How can I SSH into the appliance and change the admin password so I can start configuring the ltm?

 

Any help is much appreciated!

 

Thank you.