Question

Lost SSH access to droplet when disk storage got full

Hi, I lost access to my ubuntu droplet and can’t connect through SSH and the console in the admin panel. That happened after my droplet storage got full. How can I regain access to my droplet without resizing it so that I can delete some large files and free up some storage? Thanks you!


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KFSys
Site Moderator
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July 22, 2023

Hey @theogodard,

I’ll recommend using the recovery console rather than the Droplet console.

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/recovery/recovery-console/

The Recovery Console provides out-of-band access and is available regardless of your network settings. It emulates the access you would have if you were sitting down with a keyboard and monitor attached to the actual server. You can use this feature to log in and revert bad settings to regain normal access.

alexdo
Site Moderator
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July 21, 2023

Hello, @theogodard

I’ll recommend you to try connecting using the recovery console again, this utility is intended for cases like yours and you should be able to access the droplet and sort the disk space issue.

If your Droplet’s storage is filled to capacity, you may not be able to log in. However, DigitalOcean provides a Recovery ISO, a bootable version of Ubuntu that includes filesystem tools. You can boot your Droplet to it and clear up some space.

Let me know how it goes and I can provide you steps on how to regain access to your droplet using the Recovery ISO if this is needed.

Hope that this helps!

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