Issues trying to SSH into a fresh EC2 instance with Paramiko

Question

I'm working on a script that spins up a fresh EC2 instance with boto and uses the Paramiko SSH client to execute remote commands on the instance. For whatever reason, the Paramiko client is unabled to connect, I get the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "scripts/sconfigure.py", line 29, in <module>
    ssh.connect(instance.ip_address, username='ubuntu', key_filename=os.path.expanduser('~/.ssh/test'))
  File "build/bdist.macosx-10.3-fat/egg/paramiko/client.py", line 291, in connect
  File "<string>", line 1, in connect
socket.error: [Errno 61] Connection refused

I can ssh in fine manually using the same key file and user. Has anyone run into issues using Paramiko? My full code is below. Thanks.

import boto.ec2, time, paramiko, os
# Connect to the us-west-1 region
ec2 = boto.ec2.regions()[3].connect()
image_id = 'ami-ad7e2ee8'
image_name = 'Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) 32-bit EBS'
new_reservation = ec2.run_instances(
    image_id=image_id,
    key_name='test',
    security_groups=['web'])

instance = new_reservation.instances[0]

print "Spinning up instance for '%s' - %s. Waiting for it to boot up." % (image_id, image_name)
while instance.state != 'running':
    print "."
    time.sleep(1)
    instance.update()

print "Instance is running, ip: %s" % instance.ip_address

print "Connecting to %s as user %s" % (instance.ip_address, 'ubuntu')
ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
ssh.connect(instance.ip_address, username='ubuntu', key_filename=os.path.expanduser('~/.ssh/test'))
stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command('echo "TEST"')
print stdout.readlines()
ssh.close()

Answer 1

I seem to have figured this out by trial and error. Even though the instance status is "running" according to boto, there is a delay for when it will actually allow an SSH connection. Adding a "time.sleep(30)" before the "ssh.connect(...)" seems to do the trick for me, though this may vary.