Removing need for passphrase key in Google Cloud Projects

Question

I am trying to set up datalab notebooks in a Google Cloud project. I screwed up and entered a passphrase during the first

$ datalab connect INSTANCE_NAME

install.I quickly realized that I wished I hadn't done that, so I deleted the instance and tried to reinstall. It asked again. So, I did a bit of googling (after just deleting the new project and creating a new one), and discovered that the passphrase is required across projects.

So, I went to the metadata tab and deleted it through there- but it comes back whenever I try and create an instance (on any project) through the terminal.

Ok. So, I tried using gcloud to change the instance to not need the project passphrase, using

$ cloud compute instances add-metadata [INSTANCE_NAME] --metadata block-project-ssh-keys=TRUE

Same thing.

Please, what the heck am I missing? How do I just permanently remove the need for a passphrase when setting up an instance in datalab from the ssh terminal?

I wouldn't mind using the passphrase so much, but whenever I enter it, the terminal just stops (not hard stop- it just sits there without processing until I ctrl+C and force stop. I can type and enter and whatever, but it doesn't register my passphrase.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

FYI, I am setting all this up using a stock Pixelbook. That shouldn't matter since everything is through Google Cloud, but there ya go.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The passphrase isn't tied to your GCP project or Datalab instances in any way.

Instead, it is a property of your local private SSH key. This file usually winds up under ~/.ssh and is named something like google_compute_engine.

Since you mention using a Pixelbook, I assume you are running the datalab connect command from Cloud Shell. In that case, this file is stored inside of your Cloud Shell instance.

Delete that file, and then the next run of datalab connect will generate a new one (for which you can leave the passphrase empty).