By orange
I current have had a digital ocean droplet for the last 2 years and updating it frequently.
I recently updated it a couple of days ago, then went in to view the status using pm2 so no file updates a day after updating it. Then I went into the server and I was trying to use nvm but for some reason it was not working and just crashing out same with everything like pm2. So I went to reboot the server then ssh into it says connection refused, so then I checked the digital ocean console and it said the SSH connection Lost.
I am not sure how I can not even access my own server, from digital ocean. Thank you
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Heya, @orangejellyfish
You can use the recovery console to regain access to your droplet
https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/recovery/recovery-console/
From that console you log in as root (or a sudo user) and can check what went wrong: perhaps SSH failed to start, the disk filled up, or some critical service didn’t come back after the reboot. Once you’re in the console, you can fix configs, check logs under /var/log, free up disk space, or restart services.
If you don’t know the root password, you can hit Reset Root Password in the same “Access” tab of your Droplet in the control panel, which emails you a temporary password you can use via the recovery console.
Hope that this helps!
Hi there,
In addition to what Alex mentioned, once you get into the console or recovery mode, I would also check a few common things that often cause this after a reboot:
- Disk space, a full disk can prevent sshd and other services from starting properly
- Memory or swap issues, especially if the Droplet was under load before the reboot
- Firewall rules (ufw/iptables) to make sure port 22 is still open
- sshd status and logs (systemctl status ssh or sshd, /var/log/auth.log)
The “SSH connection lost” message usually means the Droplet is running, but SSH itself is not healthy or not listening.
Most of the time this is fixable via the recovery console once you spot what failed to come back up after the reboot.
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