Fixing SSH Key Permissions

If you've ever copied your SSH key from one sytem to another, you might see something along the lines of permissions are too open or sign_and_send_pubkey: signing failed: agent refused operation when trying to use SSH to connect from one server to another. Chances are the ownership or permissions of the ~/.ssh directory and the files inside of it are not correct. This can easily be fixed. As the user you're trying to SSH to a server, run these commands:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER ~/.ssh
sudo chmod 0600 ~/.ssh/*
sudo chmod 0700 ~/.ssh/

Once you've tried that, you should be able to SSH to your server again. I've hit this issue a number of times, so I hope this post helps someone out.