Cannot SSH connect to Lightsail Debian instance after change default shell

Question

Hi all
today I try to change the default shell to Bash from Zsh for my Debian instance.
but after I remove ZSH and try to change the default shell with command 'sudo chsh -s $(which bash)' ,  it need a password for admin. I don't have any password for that, so I cancelled.
after that I try to connect this intance with SSH again. it showed 'Permission denied (publickey)'. I'm sure I use the correct public key. How could I fix this issue?

Answer

**chsh** will change the current user's login shell, **sudo chsh** will change the root user's shell.

**Permission denied (publickey)** could be caused by many things, are you able to share more details about how you are trying to access - is it SSH from another Linux host or a Mac, is it PuTTY from Windows, or something else.

If you really have lost access to the Lightsail instance then you can snapshot it and spin up a fresh copy - with a new SSH key - from the snapshot. See method 2 in https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/lightsail-troubleshoot-lost-ssh-keypair

Answer

Hi,

Could you please check if the Lightsail browser-based SSH Connect works for you still ?
Refer doc : https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/en_us/articles/lightsail-how-to-connect-to-your-instance-virtual-private-server

If it does, you can then add new keys for accessing the instance using Putty/Terminal/etc as mentioned in [doc](https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/lightsail-troubleshoot-lost-ssh-keypair) shared by `Steve_M` above

Thanks.

Cannot SSH connect to Lightsail Debian instance after change default shell

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