Centos – Google Compute Engine Cent OS change hostname

You can limit the sudo access project wise through User Accounts feature which is currently in beta release. More information is mentioned here:

Root access

All Linux user accounts in your project are granted root access to your instances. By default, new Linux user accounts are added to the following user groups upon account creation:

gce-sudoers - Gives root access gce-users - General users group The gce-sudoers group is automatically maintained by the Cloud User Accounts service and contains every Linux user account in your project. If you wanted to restrict root access to certain accounts, remove the default policy at:

/etc/sudoers.d/gcua

Next, create your own group and add a configuration similar to the gcua file in the sudoers.d folder.

I read the answer on other issues here, but none described the solution well enough for me to follow.

I was able to gain access to the VM instance by...

1. Go to the Compute Engine in the Project
2. Click on the "SSH" button for the VM
3. Wait for the SSH console to open and connect in a browser window
   1. You may have to allow browser popups
4. Make sure you are in the home directory by typing pwd
5. Create the .ssh directory with mkdir ~/.ssh
6. Change the directory with cd ~/.ssh
7. Create/append the file authorized_keys with the OpenSSH text echo "ssh-rsa <public-key> <username> >> authorized_keys

After I did these steps I was able to get into the VM instance using putty.