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I am not very familiar with ssh and I am afraid I made a disastrous mistake.

There is an old server which used public key authentication. My public key was in the authorized keys, so I was able to access it. The user was the default 'ubuntu' user and I am pretty sure that it had no password.

I disabled the public key authentication, setting the "PubkeyAuthentication" to "no".

Now I am locked out as when I type

ssh ubuntu@[host_IP] 

I need to give a password and then I get

Permission denied, please try again

I think there was no password for this user. I am sure that I didn't have to give any password for sudo commands

Is there any way to access the server again?

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  • Local login on the console may be your option.
    – Jacek
    Mar 21, 2016 at 14:57
  • @Jacek, what do you mean by "local login"?
    – Galil
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:01
  • On the console - may be actually either local access or remote console. Whatever kind of console your server offers.
    – Jacek
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:07
  • But, it seems that I don't have the password to login using the console. I am asking if there is a default password for ubuntu, or in the worst case scenario how I can access the server again (even if physical reboot is required)
    – Galil
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:17
  • You need physical access to the server, boot to recovery mode, and set a password, and fix ssh. askubuntu.com/questions/24006/…
    – Panther
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:19

1 Answer 1

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I think the best option here is to reboot the system into single user mode and make configuration changes from there. (i.e. update the ssh configuration or set a password) Check here for details on getting into single user mode: How do I boot into single-user mode from GRUB?

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