Frequently Asked Question

Did you open the SSH port on the VM?

Did you create a security group with SSH enabled? Did you remember to select this security group when you launched this VM?

You can check the rules applied to a specific VM by going to Compute–>Instances and clicking the instance name. Scroll down to Security Groups and check for your SSH security group, and check that this line appears:

ALLOW IPv4 22/tcp from 0.0.0.0/0

Instructions on creating a security group are here: MOC video tutorials

You can add a security group to your VM after launch. Go to Project–>Compute–>Instances and click the dropdown menu under the ‘Actions’ column next to your VM. Choose ‘Edit Security Groups’. In the popup that appears, find the security group in the list on the left and click the + button next to it. This will move it to the list on the right. Once you have the right group(s) added, click Save.

VM may not be booted

Go to Compute–>Instances and check that your VM is in the Running state. If it is not, boot it and try again. If it is running, but SSH still times out, click the dropdown next to the instance and choose Console. Click the link to show only the console. You will get an error screen, but refresh the page and you should see a console screen.

Is the login prompt showing? Are there any error messages on the console screen? Try rebooting your VM and see if that fixes the problem. If the VM is not booting properly, you need to fix that problem first before SSH will work. One common reason VMs do not boot is if you chose a flavor that is too small for the OS image you chose – the CentOS, Ubuntu, and RHEL images should use m1.small or larger.