Invalid value for "path" parameter: no file exists at - amazon-web-services

Question

As mentioned at Terraform Resource: Connection Error while executing apply
I changed my code to the the below
provisioner "remote-exec" {
connection {
type = "ssh"
host = aws_eip.nat-eip.public_ip
user = "ubuntu"
private_key = file("/id_rsa.pem")
}
inline = [
"chmod +x /tmp/start_node.sh",
"sudo sed -i -e 's/\r$//' /tmp/start_node.sh", # Remove the spurious CR characters.
"sudo /tmp/start_node.sh",
]
}
But I still get the same error
Error: Invalid function argument
on explorer.tf line 60, in resource "aws_instance" "explorer":
60: private_key = file("/id_rsa.pem")
Invalid value for "path" parameter: no file exists at /id_rsa.pem;
this function works only with files that are distributed as part of the
configuration source code, so if this file will be created by a resource in
this configuration you must instead obtain this result from an attribute of
that resource.
ls -la ooutput
total 156
drwxr-xr-x 10 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 12 14:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 16 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 10 13:10 ..
drwxr-xr-x 12 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 12 09:49 byoc-terraform
drwxr-xr-x 2 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 11 11:57 controllers
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 188 Jan 10 13:27 .env
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 1582 Jan 10 17:12 fetchUserData.js
drwxr-xr-x 9 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 12 13:14 .git
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 629 Jan 10 13:27 .gitignore
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 107 Dec 30 06:49 .gitmodules
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 1765 Jan 12 13:21 id_rsa.pem
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 1488 Jan 10 13:27 index.js
drwxr-xr-x 3 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 10 13:27 models
drwxr-xr-x 221 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 12288 Jan 10 13:30 node_modules
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 1058 Jan 10 13:27 package.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 78791 Jan 10 13:27 package-lock.json
drwxr-xr-x 2 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 10 13:27 routes
drwxr-xr-x 2 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 10 17:01 utils
drwxr-xr-x 2 CORP\mayuresh CORP\domain users 4096 Jan 10 13:27 VMCreationFiles```

Answer 1

Have you tried using the full path? Especially beneficial if you are using modules.
I.E:
private_key = file("${path.module}/id_rsa.pem")
Or I think even this will work
private_key = file("./id_rsa.pem")
I believe your existing code is looking for the file at the root of your filesystem.

Answer 2

Your path to the .pem is wrong. It looks like the file exists in your $HOME directory.
You can provide the absolute path of the id_rsa.pem file if that file is outside of path.module, path.root, path.cwd
To provide the absolute path
Fetch the full path of the file How to get full path of a file?
Paste the path in:
provisioner "remote-exec" {
connection {
type = "ssh"
host = aws_eip.nat-eip.public_ip
user = "ubuntu"
private_key = file("<Absolute path to .pem file e.g /home/ubuntu/id_rsa.pem>")
}