Create kubernetes EC2 cluster on aws using kops

问题

I am trying to setup a kubernetes cluster on AWS with EC2 instances; it is supposed to be pretty straight forward.

Initially started with kubeadm and I ran into problems Setup Kubernetes (version 1.18) cluster on AWS EC2

There was a suggestion to use kops and I started with kops; I am running into problems again

I need to create kops create secret with the ssh public key The key has been generated and available in /home/ubuntu/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

however I get the following error

ubuntu@ip-10-0-1-8:~$ kops create secret --name newk8.shivag.io sshpublickey ubuntu -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub --state s3://shivag.kube-kops-state --v=3
I0418 21:55:10.880023   19723 factory.go:68] state store s3://shivag.kube-kops-state
I0418 21:55:10.880229   19723 s3context.go:325] unable to read /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/product_uuid, assuming not running on EC2: open /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/product_uuid: permission denied
I0418 21:55:10.880303   19723 s3context.go:170] defaulting region to "us-east-1"
I0418 21:55:11.281113   19723 s3context.go:210] found bucket in region "eu-west-1"

error reading SSH public key /home/ubuntu/.ssh/id_rsa.pub: open /home/ubuntu/.ssh/id_rsa.pub: permission denied

Any help will be appreciated