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Novice - my website is down - stuck in ISO Recovery mode?

Posted on February 1, 2018

We were having issues access SSH access and the password reset function was not working, so I reached out to DO support. They then set the droplet to use the DigitalOcean Recovery ISO and suggested we fully power the droplet off and then power it back on. Then they suggested I “Mount” the disk image, then reset the Droplet Root Password, which I did… They suggested I reply once I was done so that they could set the droplet to boot back to HDD instead of Recovery ISO… I responded back to let them know I reset the password… No answer yet however,

At this time my website is completely down, I’m getting “The site can’t be reached”… I don’t know if this is because I’m in ISO Recovery mode or what but I’m in hot water right now and I just need the site back up…

Does anyone have suggestions on what I should try next?

Thank you!



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There is no reason to be concerned. Booting from the recovery ISO is like putting a CD-ROM into your computer and telling it to boot from that instead of your hard drive. All the files, configuration and settings stored on your disk are still there but the server is using the operating system stored on the ISO. This way a droplet can be booted even when it’s operating system experiences a major issue. When the team removes the ISO your server will reboot to it’s own operating system complete with your site and all your settings.

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