Cant locate homeassistand folder and configuration.yaml

Configuration
1

Hi there.

I am new to the hole Home assistant system and also Raspberry PI, so sorry if the question is stupid :slight_smile:

My issue is that I cant locate the homeassistant folder on my raspbbery pi 2. I have the managed to install it and it is running as I can acsess it over webvbrowser so I assume that the system is installed correctly.
But if i look in the etc/opt I have a empty folderā€¦

The system is installed with the PI user, and is installed on a raspberry pi 2 with the latest NOOBS installed.

Pretty sure itĀ“s me how is doing it wrong :slight_smile: but cant seam to find out just what it is that is wrong.

2

The folder is usually located in the userā€™s home directory, eg. /home/pi/.homeassistant

For more details check Configuring Home Assistant.

3

Not a stupid question. Still new myself. 1st install of HASS I ended up putting it in /opt.
Next time I installed it ended up in my home folder. Hunted around for 20mins trying to find it.
You kind of have to pay attention during install to HOW you are installing it. If you are less than familiar with Linux folder permissions, the vagaries of installing as user or superuser, you can end up with your stuff either not where you expect it, or somewhere it wonā€™t work as expected.

When fabaff says ā€œusuallyā€, itā€™s not an empty statement.

4

If you cant find it in your home directory, check /var/opt/homeassistant

5

Hi there.

Thank you all for your reply, but sorry I may be a lost cause here.
Still cant find that folder you mention in any of the locations mentioned, see imagesā€¦

Temp2.JPG643Ɨ513 13.3 KB

All I have done is log in using Putty as PI, and ran the following 2 lines:
$ sudo pip3 install homeassistant
$ hass

May be that I have no grasp on how linux works, but it does at the moment seam there is no logic to itā€¦
So again sorry for the stupid question :frowning:

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6

Here the home folder

7

If your config directory is in your home directory it will be a hidden directory:

/home/pi/.homeassistant

The last image doesnā€™t show hidden directories. Either turn on show hidden files and directories in your file browser, or ssh into the RPi and do:

ls -a /home/pi

This will show you all the contents of your home directory:

8

How do i turn on show hidden files and directories in ssh?

9

You do that per call to list the directory contents, using the - a option:

ls -a /home/pi
10

I am very new to the Pi and to Home Assistant. Having the same issue. I cant seem to find the ā€œconfiguration.yamlā€ folder. After doing a ā€œlsā€ in the homeassistant directory it shows the directory but does not let me access it. He is a screen shot of my terminal window. Note: I am ssh into the Pi on Mac. Iā€™m guessing the directories that are not highlighted in purple are not accessible. Thank you in advance for the help.

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11

The directories not highlighted in purple are called ā€œfilesā€ :wink:
Try ā€œls -laā€ to see if itā€™s a file or directory. Read some info about the basic linux/unix command line tools first and try to understand what, for example, ā€œ-rw-r--r--ā€ means.
I donā€™t mean to be rude, but you wonā€™t get far without some basic command line knowledge.

You can open the configuration.yaml in the editor of your choice then.

Sebastian

12

thank you. Iā€™m trying the learn by doing approach. Kind of like moving to Spain to learn Spanish. Thanks! Do you have any recommendations as far as sources for learning Linux commands?

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13

Sorry, I donā€™t have a specific recommendation.
Any beginnerā€™s tutorial should get you going. Personally I like the Oā€™Reilly books.
Thereā€™s a ā€œLinux in a nutshellā€ which probably is fine - I havenā€™t read this one though.
After some initial reading, the ā€œlearning Spanish in Spainā€ method sounds like a good idea :slight_smile:

Sebastian

14

I am also new to pi and homeassistant. I just bought The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction to hopefully give me a much better understanding of the command line as I am currently having the same problems locating files and navigating the file structure.

Iā€™m on a Windows machine, but if you want to stay in touch over email or skype as we learn this I think that we might learn faster and better working together. I never feel as if I have learned something until I can teach it to someone. Iā€™ve got plans for my Echo, the Etekcity outlets and my Garadget to integrate with HA and the sooner I can learn it the better.

15

Iā€™ve been trying to configure Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 2. After hours of work I couldnā€™t figure out why it was not reading my configuration.yaml file. Iā€™d make changes to it and they wouldnā€™t appear in the HA browser interface.

It turned out there are configuration.yaml files in TWO places, but Home Assistant only reads one of them.

One of the files is/home/pi/.homeassistant/configuration.yaml

The other is /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/configuration.yaml

HA was reading the second one, and the one under the pi user isā€¦I donā€™t knowā€¦maybe decorative.

Hope this helps.

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16

@Nullifidian
Ugh, ty so much - that was the problem for me

17

It has just taken me 2 DAYS of searching to try and find the configuration.yaml folder and I have now found it. The easy way to find it is:

The following assumes you already have HA installed

  1. Open a terminal
  2. type ā€œhassā€
  3. Give the terminal as much time as it needs to do its thing (now would be a good time to go and get a coffee or something stronger)
  4. When the terminal has stopped doing its thing, scroll back up to the top where you first started. You should see a line of output which says something like

Config directory: /filename/filename/ .homeassistant

navigate to this file by typing cd /filename/filename/ .homeassistant (you might need to sudo su)
ls -l will confirm the correct location (configuration.yaml should be listed)
you can now use your favourite text editor to edit the file

Hope this helps.

3rd Rock Software

18

Hi steeddk, I just recently installed hass.io on raspberrypi3 with etchy on mac. However I found the yaml configuration file much easier on a windows machine by using WinSCP.

To start using WinSCP to navigate the files on your raspberry:

  1. first follow the instructions from Pete Stothers here to enable ssh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJTy3UniHc
  2. Install WinSCP by following the BRUH Automation videoā€™s
  3. Import your ssh Putty configuration in WinSCP
  4. For file protocol choose SCP
  5. Fill in your hostname, port nr. 22
  6. username is root, password is empty
  7. click advanced, choose SCP Shell, at shell choose sudo su -
  8. click ā€œokā€ and login

When everything goes well and you are logged in, you can find your configuration file in the folder root/config/

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19

Iā€™ve moved to the home directory, but moving into ā€˜piā€™ tells me thereā€™s no such file or directory.

20

Hi, new user here. I found this thread after hitting the same problem. As my pi is running debian jesse and also running other software I did not want to use the supplied OS image, and instead found the docker versions. I was able to install docker and the newer test deb packge version installed with no problems and looks to be running OK.

But, being docker, there is another location thats not yet listed in this thread. On my pi3, i found the config in /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant/

Hope this helps others!

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