Setting password on the default user

Using SSH access to set the password

In the cloud images provided there are no password set on the default users and therefore the web console will not be usable since the user will not be able to login if there is no password set on the default user. The list for which the default users for the different linux distributions can be found here. To ensure that it is only the user that has created the instance cloud images are configured to only allow SSH key login and the key is provisioned at instance creation by picking SSH key which will be the only allowed method to connect to the instance. Once the user has connected via SSH the password could be set on the user.

$ user@hostname$ passwd

Using cloud-init to set the password

In some cases the user will not be able to use SSH to connect to the instance the first time, and hence the web console is needed to be used for access. Since there is no password set on the user the user will not be able to login with the web console until the password is set. This will render a catch 22 scenario when the user must use the web console, but cannot use SSH to set the password in order to use the web console.

In order to come around this the user must use cloud-init in the configuration tab to set a password on the user:

The example above is for an Ubuntu instance in order to set the password on the default user "ubuntu" to "mypassword". For other instance types the same script can be used, just by switching the username to whatever the default username is.

#cloud-config
chpasswd:
  list: |
    ubuntu:mypassword
  expire: false

Please note that a strong password should be chosen. Also make sure to only use the options above and nothing more in the cloud-init. This is to ensure that the password login only works for the web console and does not work for SSH remote access. Now the default user, in this case "ubuntu" will have the password "mypassword" set and can be used when logging in with the web console, but not with SSH.