title: GCE - We are unable to connect to the VM on port 22
body: <p>I'm having the following error when I try to connect via SSH to my instance on Google Compute Engine.</p>
  
  <pre><code>Connection Failed. We are unable to connect to the VM on port 22.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Steps I did to get that error</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Created a new instance using an Ubuntu template.</li>
  <li>Connected via SSH and installed all my required apps.</li>
  <li>Deleted the instance but without deleting the boot disk when instance is deleted.</li>
  <li>Created a new custom image using the boot disk of the deleted instance.</li>
  <li>started a new instance using the custom image.</li>
  <li>Click on the SSH link from the GCE console.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>This is the Serial console output for the instance.</p>
  
  <pre><code>[    0.338119] Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates
  [    0.339445] Loaded X.509 cert 'Magrathea: Glacier signing key: e09b1e7e9841e9cfef256b70ab210562dab1ef68'
  [    0.341236] registered taskstats version 1
  [    0.342183] Key type trusted registered
  [    0.342872] Key type encrypted registered
  [    0.343453] AppArmor: AppArmor sha1 policy hashing enabled
  [    0.344592] ima: No TPM chip found, activating TPM-bypass!
  [    0.345433] evm: HMAC attrs: 0x1
  [    0.345974]   Magic number: 0:206:635
  [    0.346956] rtc_cmos 00:00: setting system clock to 2016-01-17 13:37:20 UTC (1453037840)
  [    0.348137] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 0 devices found
  [    0.349722] EDD information not available.
  [    0.524305] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2
  [    0.525744] md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect
  [    0.526718] md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect
  [    0.527798] md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
  [    0.528396] md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
  [    0.529008] md: autorun ...
  [    0.529414] md: ... autorun DONE.
  [    0.529988] VFS: Cannot open root device "sda1" or unknown-block(0,0): error -6
  [    0.530970] Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
  [    0.532106] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
  [    0.533250] CPU: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 3.19.0-43-generic #49~14.04.1-Ubuntu
  [    0.534451] Hardware name: Google Google, BIOS Google 01/01/2011
  [    0.535409]  ffffea0002edc240 ffff88012af0fdb8 ffffffff817afcd5 00000000000011ba
  [    0.536095]  ffffffff81a7c8b8 ffff88012af0fe38 ffffffff817a9b15 ffff88012af0fdd8
  [    0.536095]  ffffffff00000010 ffff88012af0fe48 ffff88012af0fde8 ffff88012af0fe38
  [    0.536095] Call Trace:
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff817afcd5&gt;] dump_stack+0x45/0x57
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff817a9b15&gt;] panic+0xc1/0x1f5
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff81d3e5f3&gt;] mount_block_root+0x210/0x2a9
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff81d3e822&gt;] mount_root+0x54/0x58
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff81d3e993&gt;] prepare_namespace+0x16d/0x1a6
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff81d3e304&gt;] kernel_init_freeable+0x1f6/0x20b
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff81d3d9a7&gt;] ? initcall_blacklist+0xc0/0xc0
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff817a01d0&gt;] ? rest_init+0x80/0x80
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff817a01de&gt;] kernel_init+0xe/0xf0
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff817b7658&gt;] ret_from_fork+0x58/0x90
  [    0.536095]  [&lt;ffffffff817a01d0&gt;] ? rest_init+0x80/0x80
  [    0.536095] Kernel Offset: 0x0 from 0xffffffff81000000 (relocation range: 0xffffffff80000000-0xffffffffbfffffff)
  [    0.536095] ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So my question is how can I connect via SSH to my instance and how to make sure it doesn't happen again when I create a new custom image.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>