Virtual Private Servers - VPS login and password not accepted. Reboot in Rescue Mode results in root and temp password not being accepted
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VPS login and password not accepted. Reboot in Rescue Mode results in root and temp password not being accepted

JC
Von
Jon Cone
Erstellungsdatum 2026-01-15 20:04:04 in Virtual Private Servers

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a workaround for a persistent issue with OVH Rescue Mode. Despite following the official documentation, my VPS will not accept the root user and the temporary password generated by the manager after a reboot into Rescue Mode.

The Issue:

  • VPS rebooted into Rescue Mode.

  • Received the temporary password via email/dashboard.

  • Login attempts (via SSH and KVM/Console) fail with "Permission denied" or "Incorrect login."

  • Confirmed keyboard layout (AZERTY vs. QWERTY) is not the issue.

What we’ve tried:

  • Hired an external engineer who confirmed the credentials fail.

  • Contacted Support multiple times; received canned responses to "follow the instructions" despite sending screenshots of the failure.

  • We eventually had to migrate to a different provider just to get back online, but I still have two inaccessible VPS instances at OVH that I need to recover.

Has anyone found an "undocumented" trick to get these credentials recognized? Is there a specific SSH flag or a delay required before the password becomes active? It feels like a bug in the automated provisioning of the rescue environment.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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1 Antwort ( Latest reply on 2026-01-23 13:16:03 Von
Madeline Senger
)

Please do :

ssh -v <ip_of_vps>

You will get a trace of the initial handshake, where both parts must agree on a common crypto algorithm.

If your PC is very old, try with a more recent computer on your side.

 
Hilfreich (0)
MS

Hi Jon,

That definitely sounds frustrating, and you’re not the only one who’s run into this with OVH Rescue Mode. In similar cases, the issue wasn’t SSH flags or delays, but a broken rescue environment where the password never properly syncs. A workaround that sometimes helps is booting into rescue, mounting the VPS disk manually, and resetting the root password from a clean environment using a VPS recovery guide rather than relying on the automated credentials.

If console login also fails, that usually points to a provisioning bug on OVH’s side rather than anything you’re doing wrong. At that point, manual disk access or provider-side intervention is often the only reliable path to recovery.

Hope this helps, and good luck recovering those instances.
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