# [[Enabling root access to Linux VM]]
![[Enabling root access to Linux VM.svg]]
Sometimes, for security reasons, root access is disabled by default in [[Linux]] virtual machines. This is commonly seen when using enterprise [[Cloud Provider]]s like [[Google Cloud Platform|GCP]] or [[AWS]], for example.
To enable root access, you need to create an [[SSH]] key and change the permissions on the machine to authorize the key for use with the root user. You can follow the instructions [on the GCP docs](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/connect/root-ssh), but I'll repost some of it here for ease.
## Steps
### [[Create an SSH key on Linux|Create an SSH key]]
Generate an [[SSH]] key. You can do this on any computer, including the one you want to access via `root`.
### Enable root login
Allow connections to the VM using `root` by running this command:
```bash
sudo sed -i 's/PermitRootLogin no/PermitRootLogin prohibit-password/g' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
```
### Add key as authorized key
Run these commands one at a time:
```bash
sudo mkdir /root/.ssh
sudo chmod 700 /root/.ssh
sudo touch /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo chmod 600 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
```
Copy the public SSH key that you created earlier, and then paste it into `/root/.ssh/authorized_keys`.
[[Reboot Linux VM|Reboot the VM]] and then [[Connect to Linux VMs as root|reconnect as root]].
%%
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