Can't Access Droplet via Putty or Terminal

October 12, 2016 5.5k views
Applications Ubuntu
sengerson
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sengerson

I am unable to access my digital ocean droplet via putty or terminal. I'm a newbie to all of this. Any help or direction would be appreciated. Thank you!

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4 Answers
raistlin2015 December 26, 2017

For any other users having this problem remember to allow access to port 22 for ssh in your firewall settings.

ufw users $ sudo ufw allow 22

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ryanpq MOD October 12, 2016

If you are unable to access your droplet via SSH (using putty or another client)

  • If you have a password set for the root user (or another user with sudo) you can log in via the console in the control panel (I am not sure if this is what you are referring to as the "terminal".

  • If you have not set a root password and do not have another user account with a password you will not be able to access the console.

If you are not able to access the console:

  • If there are errors or other information being displayed in the console sharing that information here can help to track down the source of the problem.

  • Using the option in the control panel, reboot your droplet and once it has rebooted try accessing the console or connecting to the ssh service again.

If you are still not able to access your droplet via ssh or the console:

  • Open a ticket with our support team here or here and request that they reboot your droplet to a recovery ISO. From there you can investigate and make changes to your filesystem.

or

  • Destroy or rebuild your droplet from a clean image (this will replace/delete all contents of your droplet so this option would only be feasible if you have either not completed your setup of the droplet or you have a snapshot or backup image available to restore from).
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sengerson October 12, 2016

Ryan, when I open the console, I get a pop up window with a black screen, but have no idea how to even type inside of it. I keep clicking in it...and nothing happens. Am I using this wrong?

http://imgur.com/a/uEHkS

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  • xMudrii October 12, 2016

    Hi @sengnickerson ,

    Image is blurred, but as far as I can see, this not good sign.

    When you fire up console, you should see screen like this. You will be prompt to enter your user name, and afterwards password (keep in mind password while not be shown while you type it).

    Anyways, on the image, it looks like your droplet doesn't even boot properly.
    Did you change any settings before this happened ? As Droplet doesn't even boot, best bet would be to contact support. They can assist you further, for example they can reboot your droplet to recovery ISO, so you have file system access.
    Maybe you can even share console content (logs you see), just make sure you hide any sensitive informations

sengerson October 12, 2016

Hi @xMudrii @ryanpq,

I blurred it out because I didn't know what was important or should be kept secret. I had my developer look and he's having issues to. I logged a ticket.

But this is what we found so far:

Can't login at all. Even at the console access from UI, it won't budge. I created a live snapshot of the droplet, created a new droplet from that, same issue. I power cycled the original droplet, still can't login through either ssh or the console access.

Couple of errors jumping out from the console access:

init: startpar-bridge (mountall--stopped) main process (161) terminataed with status 255

every time, the last message I can get from console access is:

random: nonblocking pool is initialized.

I can't access it at all.

Another error in the console access (I can't type anything, just gives me a few lines on display)

init: error while reading from descriptor: Bad file descriptor

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  • ryanpq MOD October 12, 2016

    It sounds like it is likely that there is some filesystem corruption. This is not good but not impossible to recover from. Our support team will most likely get you booted into our recovery environment where you will be able to run an filesystem check/repair on your disk.

    • sengerson October 12, 2016

      Here's what support told us to do. We did it and it still does not work:

      We've mounted the recovery tool to your droplet. You would need to power-cycle[1] the droplet. Then access the web console[2], and we would be interested in you performing a FSCK (File System Check) as this should rebuild what is causing these particular error messages. In addition to the files it cannot correct, the FSCK would place them in lost+found.

      Gah..I'm hoping for the best. Hoping for a response tonight. Thanks!

      • ryanpq MOD October 13, 2016

        Unfortunately if an attempt to repair your filesystem from the recovery environment was unsuccessful there will not be a way to recover them. If you enabled the backup service on your droplet I would recommend restoring from your most recent backup (or snapshot image if you have one).

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