Enabling Host SSH *in virtual machine*

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

Hi,
My Home Assistant OS install is in a qemu VM. I’d like to enable SSH to the host as my other access is via a slightly fragile serial console.

Yes, I know about Debugging the Home Assistant Operating System | Home Assistant Developer Docs

No, it’s not simple to “plug a USB drive” into the VM.

What’s ha os import doing behind the scenes?

Edit:

From serial terminal (VM console):

cat > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
#(enter key, ctrl+D)
systemctl start dropbear

Via looking at the ConditionFileNotEmpty setting here:

1 Like
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Since your VM “console” works…
A trick I have used is to take the “authorized_keys” file that one can generate off-line and copy it into say HA’s “share” folder. From the VM Console (HAOS shell) you can get to the “share” folder at /mnt/data/supervisor/share/. So just copy authorized_keys file into /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

1 Like
3

Thanks Tommy. My edit works as well, the key piece is that dropbear won’t start until authorized_keys is in place.

4

Adding my method for anyone else who is interested. I created a virtual USB drive and attached it to my libvirt (kvm) haos installation

First: create the image:

dd if=/dev/zero of=usb.img bs=1M count=4096
sudo losetup -f -P usb.img
sudo mkfs.vfat -n CONFIG /dev/loop0p1
sudo mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt/tmp
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | sudo tee /mnt/tmp/authorized_keys
sudo umount /mnt/tmp
sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0

Copy the image to your libvirt storage (probably /var/lib/libvirt/images)

Then, attach the disk through libvirt using virt-manager:

  • Add hardware → Storage
  • Select the disk image
  • Change bus type to USB

My XML looks like:

    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/usb.img'/>
      <target dev='sda' bus='usb'/>
      <address type='usb' bus='0' port='4'/>
    </disk>

ha os import correctly imported this disk and enabled ssh