Question

How to disable email notifications when deploying droplets via IaC (Terraform)

Posted on October 26, 2024
Terraform Droplets
Asked by Mrugesh Mohapatra

I am trying to deploy a fairly good number of droplets (dozens at a time) via IaC (Terraform) and I see that I am getting root user credentials in emails.

How do I disable this completely? I do not need it.

Your new Droplet is all set to go! You can access it using the following credentials:

Droplet Name: xxxxxxxxxx
IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Username: root
Password: xxxxxxx

For security reasons, you will be required to change this Droplet’s root password when you login. You should choose a strong password that will be easy for you to remember, but hard for a computer to guess. You might try creating an alpha-numerical phrase from a memorable sentence (e.g. “I won my first spelling bee at age 7,” might become “Iwm#1sbaa7”). Random strings of common words, such as “Mousetrap Sandwich Hospital Anecdote,” tend to work well, too.

As an added security measure, we also strongly recommend adding an SSH key to your account. You can do that here: [REDACTED]

Once added, you can select your SSH key and use it when creating future Droplets. This eliminates the need for root passwords altogether, and makes your Droplets much less vulnerable to attack.

Happy Coding,
Team DigitalOcean

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• October 27, 2024

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

To disable these email notifications with root credentials when deploying DigitalOcean Droplets via Terraform, you can use SSH keys instead of passwords for authentication.

Basically, by setting an SSH key for each Droplet, DigitalOcean will no longer send these initial setup emails with root credentials, as no password will be generated.

Here’s how to do it:

Use the ssh_keys parameter to reference an SSH key. You can retrieve an existing SSH key by using the digitalocean_ssh_key data source.

data "digitalocean_ssh_key" "example" {
  name = "example" # Replace with the actual name of your SSH key
}

resource "digitalocean_droplet" "web" {
  name   = "example-droplet"
  region = "nyc3"
  size   = "s-1vcpu-1gb"
  image  = "ubuntu-20-04-x64"
  
  ssh_keys = [data.digitalocean_ssh_key.example.id] # Adds the SSH key to the Droplet
}

With this configuration your Droplet is created with the specified SSH key, bypassing password-based login, which stops the automatic email containing root login credentials.