I am trying to currently add an ssh key to my elastic beanstalk instances using .ebextensions commands. The keys I have stored are in my application code and I try to copy them to the root .ssh folder so I can access them when doing a git+ssh clone later here is an example of the config file in my .ebextensions folder packages: yum: git: [] container_commands: 01-move-ssh-keys: command: "cp .ssh/* ~root/.ssh/; chmod 400 ~root/.ssh/tca_read_rsa; chmod 400 ~root/.ssh/tca_read_rsa.pub; chmod 644 ~root/.ssh/known_hosts;" 02-add-ssh-keys: command: "ssh-add ~root/.ssh/tca_read_rsa" the problem is that I get is an error when attempting to clone the repo Host key verification failed. I have tried many ways of try to add the host to the known_hosts file but none have worked! The command that is doing the clone is npm install as the repo points to a node module