vps.taxi

Reinstall the operating system

A reinstall wipes the whole disk and installs a fresh system in about a minute. The IP address stays the same, and a new root password is generated.

A reinstall deletes all data on the server, and it cannot be recovered. Copy everything you want to keep to another place first.

1. Back up

For example, copy a directory from the server to your computer (run this on your computer; scp takes the port with a capital -P):

scp -P PORT -r root@SERVER_IP:/root/data ./backup

2. Reinstall

  1. Log in to the client area and open your server.
  2. Go to the Reinstall & push section and click Reinstall….
  3. Choose the system to install: Ubuntu 26.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 13, Debian 12, AlmaLinux 9, Rocky Linux 9.
  4. SSH public key (optional): the field is pre-filled with the server’s current public key. Keep it, replace it, generate a new key pair in the browser, or clear it. With a key, the new system allows SSH login with that key only and the root password is for the Web console only; with the field empty, SSH uses the root password.
  5. Install and enable the QEMU Guest Agent is ticked by default. Keep it on: the panel uses it to shut down and restart cleanly and to reset the root password.
  6. Type the server’s hostname to confirm, and confirm once more.

The reinstall takes about a minute.

3. After the reinstall

  • The IP address stays the same. The new root password is in the client area (Show, shown for 7 days).
  • The SSH port goes back to the port shown in the client area, also if you had changed it.
  • The server has new SSH host keys, so your SSH client warns that the host key has changed. Remove the old key on your computer, then connect again: 
    ssh-keygen -R "[SERVER_IP]:PORT"
  • Settings you made in the old system are gone, for example BBR or a firewall: set them up again.