Login to droplet with a password

Hey @JaiminJoshi 👋

When you create a Droplet with SSH keys, password authentication is disabled by default I believe:

https://docs.digitalocean.com/support/i-lost-the-ssh-key-for-my-droplet/#enable-password-authentication

If you need to switch back to the root user, the best approach is to use:

sudo -i

from your regular user, if it has sudo privileges.

If you really need to enable password login or set a root password (not recommended for security reasons), you can SSH into the Droplet and run:

sudo passwd root

And if needed, update the SSH config to allow password auth as per the guide above:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Set:
PasswordAuthentication yes

Then restart SSH:

sudo systemctl restart ssh

But again, try to stick with SSH keys and sudo for better security!

- Bobby

Heya,

You’ll need to turn on PasswordAuthentication in your sshd_config first. By default the root password is not known so you need to change it beforehand and use the one you’ve changed it to.

Heya, @jaiminjoshi

If the droplet was created with SSH key, than the password authentication will be disabled and you’ll need to enable it as described and then restart ssh:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Set:
PasswordAuthentication yes

Regards