Guide: Rescue and Recovery

In some cases, you may lose access to a running virtual machine (VM) — for example, if your SSH key is missing. This guide explains how to recover your data or restore access to the instance.

Restore Access to VM

⚠️ Note: The steps described below are emergency recovery procedures. This workaround is cumbersome but can help you recover access or retrieve your data. To prevent situations like this, always store and manage your SSH keys securely.

Before proceeding, make sure the issue is not caused by network problems (e.g., security group misconfiguration or floating IP changes). If you've confirmed that it's not a network issue, follow the steps below. These steps can be carried out via the Dashboard or the CLI.

Recovery Procedure

1. Stop the affected VM (e.g., foo1_vm).
2. Ceate a snapshot image of the instance and name it (e.g., foo1_img).
3. Use foo1_img to create a new volume, e.g., foo1_vol.
4. Launch a fresh VM (e.g., foo2_vm) using a known working key pair.
5. Attach foo1_vol to foo2_vm and mount its file system (this contains the original VM’s disk).

At this point you can recover your data from the mounted volume.

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Optionally: Restore the Original Instance

• Copy a new SSH public key into the original VM's authorized_keys file.
• Reverse the procedure above to rebuild the original instance.