How to recover SSH access to EC2 instance?

Question

Hello, recently I set up the Hide.me VPN service in one of my EC2 instances, after starting the service I got disconnected from my SSH instance and I couldn't enter anymore. The instance seems to be up and running in the UI but I cannot access to it. Any help is much appreciated.

Answer

Here are the steps to gain access:
1. Stop broken instance
2. Detach broken instance root volume
3. Start new instance that you can login to
4. Attach broken instance volume to new instance
5. Mount the broken instance volume at the OS level
6. Fix/undo the configuration on the broken instance volume
7. Unmount/detach broken (now-fixed) instance volume
8. Attach now-fixed volume to broken instance
9. Start broken (now-fixed) instance
10. Login

How to recover SSH access to EC2 instance?

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