GCP compute Engine SSH permissions Issue

Question

Hi Everyone i've been banging my head against this issue all day and all the solutions seem to be tackling different SSH issues.

My goal is to connect using FileZilla sFTP into my Google Compute Engine. I'm running a wordpress site there and I need file edit access.

In Terminal When I run :

root@wordpress-1-vm:~# gcloud compute ssh wordpress-1-vm

I get this error:

ERROR: (gcloud.compute.ssh) Could not fetch resource: - Insufficient Permission

I'm using Root user, but I also get this with my personal User which has OWNER access.

What I've tried:

I have payment set up, no problems
I've checked my IAM settings, my user is an Owner. I also added Admin access to compute Engine
I updated the File Permissions to '777' Mentioned HERE
I also get this same error when using Terminal on my local machine, or browser SSH connection from google cloud

Answer 1

GCE instances require key-based authentication by default, and root login is not permitted regardless. If you are trying to use password authentication with FileZilla or your local terminal but you haven't configured sshd to allow it, the connection will be denied. Also, you would probably need to set a password for the user, if you haven't done that already.

That said, if you are getting the same error using google's browser-based ssh, something else may be going on, because that should automatically set up keys for you. Hope this helps.