How to recover SSH private key pair on OpenStack

Question

I've been using a virtual machine on OpenStack, and I lost my RSA private key. Is there anyway I can get to access this virtual machine? Of course, without using the RSA key. I was thinking about asking the administrator to change access permissions, so I could access my VM and rebuild the RSA key.

Is there any administrator directive on Openstack that would allow changing access permissions? For example, is there any administrator directive that may deactivating RSA checking on the VM during the ssh connection?

Solution

You can't recover your private key. If there is another account that allows ssh access to that VM, and that account has sudo privileges, you can ssh with that account and sudo into your account's files. From there you can change the key to a pair you already have.

Alternatively, if your information is stored on a Cinder volume, you can shut down the machine , detach the volume and add it to a new machine, giving you access to your files.