Accessing Terminal using SSH

Configuration
1

Good day,

I have config “Advanced SSH & Web Terminal” as per some YouTube video’s.

Going to “Windows PowerSheel” at the cmd prompt, I enter:
PS C:\Users\user> ssh [email protected]

I have previously said yes to the lines followed

[email protected]’s password: entered my password
[\e]0;\u@\h:\w\a]\W $ ← this is what I get

What am I doing wrong? It is not showing the “Terminal” “front page”

If I am in HA and use “Terminal” it works fine, but not if I access it through Windows PowerShell, Putty or any of these types of programs.

2

My guess is an incorrect $TERM setting in PuTTY.

In the old days, terminals were hardware devices (CRT screen, keyboard, serial interface, later LAN) and worked differently - e.g. VT100 gave different characters than an xterm. Control characters like bold and colours were very likely to use different control codes. Software terminal emulators are the same - try VT100 or xterm or whatever and see if the \e\w\a disappears.

3

The thing is, it does the same with Windows Terminal. Most of the example I looked at, they used this and it worked fine when they show it in “YouTube”.

Like most things, it works fine in the example, but when I try it…

4

The $TERM will be wrong there as well - works fine on Linux with $TERM = xterm-256color which suggests the number of colours might be the issue.

There have been a few similar posts on this same issue suggesting something has changed recently.

5

FWIW, using Windows 11 built in ssh.exe to HAOS on port 22222 works fine and still correctly sets up the terminal. Maybe this is related to the Add-in. Technically, PowerShell is running the ssh.exe built in to Windows, just like cmd.exe would do.

You can add -vvv to the ssh command line and get debug output. You should see debug related to the terminal setup:

debug1: ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_INPUT is supported. Reading the VTSequence from console
debug3: This windows OS supports conpty
debug1: ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING is supported. Console supports the ansi parsing
debug3: Successfully set console output code page from:65001 to 65001
debug3: Successfully set console input code page from:437 to 65001

What does your version say?

6

The default shell is zsh on the HA appliance. Given that – “Oh my zsh” is a godsend.

Scroll down and you’ll find the install, which is done from the shell on the HA appliance (your Raspberry Pi or equivalent):

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Once you do this, you’ll get a very nice prompt and many other goodies pertinent to the shell.

[EDIT]: The real crux of this issue is this:

https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-ssh/issues/788

Furthermore, installing/configuring “Oh My Zsh” again works only until you reboot. Then all changes, for some reason, get wiped out. The simple fix from 788

ln -s /home/<username>/.profile /home/<username>/.zprofile

also does not survive a reboot. I don’t know why any additional files added to your home directory are removed at reboot. Everything is reset to stock when the system is shut down.

7

Because Home Assistant is a docker container. This is the nature of docker. Only the files under /configuration are retained.

8

Actually a bunch of docker containers; even the ssh add-on is itself a container. My question is how all of this is orchestrated at boot – how are these containers instantiated? There has to be a base OS the box boots into, correct?

9

Yes, dependent on the install method. Perhaps this will help. Are you familiar with the Community Guides? Always a good place to start a self-help journey of education.

SSH Development Access (Core SSH, Root CLI) - Community Guides - Home Assistant Community

10

Thanks! I also found this regarding s6_overlay which explains the orchestration part. Now on to the specifics of what HA does with it.