This used to be entirely-possible even through FreeBSD was not “officially” supported. This change, unfortunately, means that recovery from a problem is no longer reasonably possible since there is now no way to get console access at all. All I get now is “Waiting for console”…
Is DO really trying to throw a nearly 10 year old customer off by making it impossible for me to perform updates and maintenance with reasonable safety?
Edit: Ok, its STILL THERE but not where it was – now its under “settings” in “Recovery Console.” I know DO walked away from FreeBSD support quite some time ago but IMHO they should reconsider given that I submitted a literal one-word change in their init script dependency years ago that resolved the only actual problem – and FreeBSD has worked fine since.
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.
Heya, @karldenninger
Glad you found it! Yeah the console got moved around in a recent UI update which caught a few people off guard - Settings → Recovery Console is the new home for it.
And fair point on the FreeBSD history, that one word init fix is a good example of how little it sometimes takes to make things work. It’s never been officially supported but it’s held up surprisingly well for years running unsupported.
Regards
Hi there,
The console moved to Droplets -> your Droplet -> Settings -> Recovery Console as part of a UI redesign.
Since you already solved it, just wanted to confirm this is a known navigation change and not a functionality removal. FreeBSD still works on Droplets, it’s just not officially supported, so UI updates won’t always account for edge cases like this.
If you run into actual console connectivity issues beyond the location change, opening a support ticket is the best path since unofficial OS setups can behave differently depending on the Droplet’s kernel config.
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

From GPU-powered inference and Kubernetes to managed databases and storage, get everything you need to build, scale, and deploy intelligent applications.
