The problem is this:

vagrant failed to provision a box after it is successfully created in aws ec2.

It reported:

     INFO ssh: SSH not up: #<Vagrant::Errors::SSHAuthenticationFailed: SSH authentication failed! This is typically caused by the public/private
     keypair for the SSH user not being properly set on the guest VM. Please
     verify that the guest VM is setup with the proper public key, and that
     the private key path for Vagrant is setup properly as well.>

But if I do vagrant ssh I can login to the box with no problem.

I have tried everything to get it to work. I have removed rvm, I have reinstalled chefdk, I have downgraded vagrant… None of them work.

I studied the log message a bit closer and I found these lines:

     769 D, [2015-02-19T15:05:43.563478 #14537] DEBUG -- net.ssh.authentication.session[851208b0]: allowed methods: publickey
     770 D, [2015-02-19T15:05:43.563564 #14537] DEBUG -- net.ssh.authentication.methods.none[85125400]: none failed
     771 D, [2015-02-19T15:05:43.563650 #14537] DEBUG -- net.ssh.authentication.session[851208b0]: trying publickey
     772 E, [2015-02-19T15:05:43.564057 #14537] ERROR -- net.ssh.authentication.key_manager[851256d0]: could not load public key file `/Users/antkong/dev/project/aws/aws-ami.pem': Net::SSH::Exception (public key at /Users/antkong/dev/project/aws/aws-ami.pem.pub is not valid)

Apparently for some reason the key manager picked the public key file to connect to the server: I have specified a private key file in the Vagrantfile. The key manager added ‘.pub’ to the file name and pick the file up.

Removing the public key file solved the issue.

Lesson: Don’t put the public key along with the private key.