google compute engine "Connect to serial console" no longer working?

Cedric De Vroey

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Jul 12, 2016, 8:20:45 AM7/12/16

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I'm having a problem with my instance on CE. It's an ubuntu webserver with SSL configured using a password-protected certificate. Now, this certificate requires a password to be entered upon reboot which makes the machine effectively hang. Because this happens before the SSH-daemon is started I'm also locked out from the machine over SSH.

A few months ago I also faced this issue and someone from Google gave me access to the alpha release of "connect to serial console" which worked great and solved the issue. Now, I'm facing the same issue again, but the serial console is no longer working:

$ gcloud alpha compute --project "sandbox-974" connect-to-serial-port "phpsandbox" --zone "europe-west1-b"

Permission denied (publickey).

ERROR: (gcloud.alpha.compute.connect-to-serial-port) [/usr/bin/ssh] exited with return code [255]. See https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/troubleshooting#ssherrors for troubleshooting hints.

Any advice?

Faizan (Google Cloud Support)

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Jul 13, 2016, 11:36:36 AM7/13/16

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Hello Cedric,

The serial console authenticates users with SSH keys. The permission denied error probably indicates that SSH private key authentication has failed. Can you make sure the public SSH key is in project or instance metadata, and your private key on the local machine from which you want to connect. You can refer to this link [1] which has information on managing your SSH keys.

The Interactive Serial Console feature is now in beta release. The steps to connect to serial console are mentioned on this link [2]. Can you follow the steps to see if that works for you.

I hope that helps.

Faizan

[1] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/ssh-keys

[2] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/interacting-with-serial-console

Cedric De Vroey

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Jul 13, 2016, 2:45:02 PM7/13/16

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Well, I didn't change anything really, just connected a few hours later and it worked again. Thanks anyway :-)

Op woensdag 13 juli 2016 17:36:36 UTC+2 schreef Faizan (Google Cloud Support):

Chris MacGregor

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Jul 13, 2016, 2:52:05 PM7/13/16

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Hi, Cedric.

The Interactive Serial Console service had a temporary outage, which (as you noticed) has now been resolved. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Cheers,

Chris

Julien Andonov

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Jan 24, 2018, 2:33:35 PM1/24/18

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Hello all

I have similar problem.

I wrongly changed a setting in:

/etc/selinux/conf

and now, my machine cannot boot. I tried to enter into a single user / rescue mode, but to no success, I even opened a call to Google Support: 14797769

But to no success, please let me know how to enter into a single user mode.

Best regards

Julien Andonov

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