Powered off my VPS, now can't SSH in

Posted on March 26, 2017

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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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.

Flamber 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.

KFSys

November 3, 2022

Hello all,

In such cases, it’s best to use the Recovery Console to see what’s going on :

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

It’s possible the Droplet had kernel panic or something similar. As such using the recovery console should help you pinpoint the exact issue.

From that point on it’s about troubleshooting. Sometimes though, you won’t be able to resolve the issue. When that happens best to contact DigitalOcean’s Support.