I am trying to deploy a fairly good number of droplets (dozens at a time) via IaC (Terraform) and I see that I am getting root user credentials in emails.
How do I disable this completely? I do not need it.
Your new Droplet is all set to go! You can access it using the following credentials:
Droplet Name: xxxxxxxxxx
IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Username: root
Password: xxxxxxx
For security reasons, you will be required to change this Droplet’s root password when you login. You should choose a strong password that will be easy for you to remember, but hard for a computer to guess. You might try creating an alpha-numerical phrase from a memorable sentence (e.g. “I won my first spelling bee at age 7,” might become “Iwm#1sbaa7”). Random strings of common words, such as “Mousetrap Sandwich Hospital Anecdote,” tend to work well, too.
As an added security measure, we also strongly recommend adding an SSH key to your account. You can do that here: [REDACTED]
Once added, you can select your SSH key and use it when creating future Droplets. This eliminates the need for root passwords altogether, and makes your Droplets much less vulnerable to attack.
Happy Coding,
Team DigitalOcean
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Accepted Answer
Hi there,
To disable these email notifications with root credentials when deploying DigitalOcean Droplets via Terraform, you can use SSH keys instead of passwords for authentication.
Basically, by setting an SSH key for each Droplet, DigitalOcean will no longer send these initial setup emails with root credentials, as no password will be generated.
Here’s how to do it:
-
Use the
ssh_keysparameter to reference an SSH key. You can retrieve an existing SSH key by using thedigitalocean_ssh_keydata source.data "digitalocean_ssh_key" "example" { name = "example" # Replace with the actual name of your SSH key } resource "digitalocean_droplet" "web" { name = "example-droplet" region = "nyc3" size = "s-1vcpu-1gb" image = "ubuntu-20-04-x64" ssh_keys = [data.digitalocean_ssh_key.example.id] # Adds the SSH key to the Droplet } -
With this configuration your Droplet is created with the specified SSH key, bypassing password-based login, which stops the automatic email containing root login credentials.
You can find more about SSH keys with DigitalOcean’s Terraform Provider here in the documentation.
Let me know if you have any questions!
- Bobby
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