Unable to ssh to remote server

I’m trying to log in to a particular user on my lightsail account via ssh but I get a permission denied (public key) error

Here are the steps I followed(I am on git bash on windows 8)

1. ssh into my lightsail account via the .pem key provided via aws

   ssh -i <key.pem> ubuntu@<public_ip_address>

(I am now logged in to my lightsail server)

1. sudo adduser user1
2. sudo touch /etc/sudoers.d/user1
3. sudo nano /etc/sudoers.d/user1

** user1 ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL**

4. su - user1

5. sudo mkdir .ssh

6. sudo touch .ssh/authorized_keys

I open Another shell prompt and do the following

–ssh-keygen

–cat <file_location_of_key>.pub

-copy the contents

7. paste the contents of the public key created on my local machine via ssh-keygen
8. sudo chmod 700 .ssh
9. sudo chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys
10. sudo service ssh restart
11. exit

I exit from the lightsail account and try to ssh to the grader user

ssh -i <file_location_of_key> user1@<public_ip_address>

I get the error Permission denied (publickey).

Note: I havn’t changed any port setting yet. I’m still trying to connect it to my default port 22

Answer

@RickBaker @helloV Thanks for your help. Realised the file was still owned by root. Had to change to ownership of the file to user1. ssh works fine now