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Powered off my VPS, now can't SSH in

Posted March 26, 2017 1.9k views
SecurityUbuntu 16.04

I powered off my droplet from the command line to do a snapshot. After powering back up I can’t ssh in. PuTTY gives me a “Server refused our key” error and prompts for password of the root user (providing the password doesn’t get me in either, it says “Access denied”). Any idea what’s happened?

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nathanscherneck
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2 answers
hansen March 26, 2017

@nathanscherneck
No, not sure what has happened. Did you do update or major changes since last reboot?
Go to the control panel, click the droplet, click Access-menu, click reset root password.

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  • nathanscherneck March 26, 2017

    I’ve reset the root password, and can access the droplet through the DO console, but not through PuTTY. Didn’t update anything, just did a snapshot and powered back on.

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    • hansen March 26, 2017

      Okay, if you cannot access through SSH, but the DO console works, then it’s a problem with keys, so clean out the keys in PuTTY and maybe even on the server, and set them up again.

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gc948486cbc56b8 March 28, 2017

I also found myself in a situation where I couldn’t log into a powered up droplet. I have no idea what I did for get in that situation since the droplet was working fine when I shut it down and took a snapshot.

I’ve made it a point to store two snapshots. Also when I take a snapshot, I restore the droplet from that snapshot. That way I know the snapshot is bootable. I suppose one snapshot is enough if you proved it was bootable.

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