How to access config.txt in Hassio?

DWiskow · June 14, 2020, 11:50am

Access config.txt on the HassOS FAT boot partition (Pi3b or Pi3B+)

HassOS uses a completely different partition layout and format than the normal Raspberry Pi (Raspbian / Pi-OS) schema, with eight partitions rather than two.

The first of these partitions (sd[x]1) is the equivalent of the Raspbian/Pi-OS boot partition, normally readable on Windows, Mac & Linux machines. But, when a HassOS format SD card/USB adaptor is inserted, partition one does not auto mount and it is therefore not easy to find and/or edit the config.txt file.

It is possible to manually mount the HassOS boot partition on a linux machine (e.g. another Raspberry Pi and/or the same Raspberry Pi running standard Raspbian/Pi-OS from a separate SD card). The HassOS SD card can then be placed in a USB SD Card Adaptor, the adaptor inserted into the Raspberry Pi and the HassOS boot partition (and more importantly the config.txt file) accessed using the following commands.

df -h
lsblk

sudo mkdir /mnt/boot
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

ls -l /mint/boot
sudo nano /mint/boot/config.txt

sudo umount /dev/sda1
sudo rmdir /mnt/boot

NOTE: where /dev/sda1 is the HassOS device partition

The HassOS boot partition has many fewer files on it than a Raspian/Pi-OS boot partition, as it loads a different operating system (a minimalist linux appliance OS based on buildroot https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot/tree/master/board/raspberrypi with HassIO running in Docker on top). You will however find the familiar bootcode.bin,cmdline.txt, config.txt, fix up.dat and start.elf together with the usual overlays folder and a subset of the system files (bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb, bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb, bcm2710-rpi-cm3.dtb)

There are also some ‘new’ files (boot.scr & u-boot.bin), relating to the different operating system (HassOS) to be loaded and run.

This approach allowed me to add the following lines to the config.txt file on my old Raspberry Pi3b . . .

[all]
boot_delay=1
arm_freq=1400
core_freq=500
over_voltage=4
sdram_freq=500

. . . to Over Clock it, and get a significant improvement in horse power & responsiveness [of course, I had also added a substantial heat sink and active cooling with a 5v fan which keeps its CPU temperature down at around 40ºC].

alex4p · July 25, 2020, 9:34pm

Hi, when I ssh to my Pi on my Mac using:

ssh [email protected] -p 22222

I cannot log into a normal terminal. it has the

ha >

symbol on. Does anyone know how to access it so I can do

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

?

Many Thanks,
Alex

DWiskow · July 26, 2020, 10:56pm

You could just read and then follow the instructions in the post immediately sbove yours !

alex4p · August 2, 2020, 10:59am

hey DWuskow,
Thanks for your reply but I do not think you understand my question. my problem was getting from a terminal starting with ha > to a normal terminal. where I type commands like the one above my first post.

It is obvious that when you log in into home assistant via ssh you get a line that says:

If you need access to host system use 'login'.

so I did type login and now the command prompt changed from ha > to #. But I thought that it was not a proper terminal since when I tried to type basic commands like ls it doesn’t seem to list the files, and there is no indication of the folder I am in. Furthermore, the sudo command seems missing.

Does anyone know what I am missing? Thanks in advance

Here is a piece of code:

ssh [email protected] -p 22222
 _    _                                         _     _              _   
| |  | |                          /\           (_)   | |            | |  
| |__| | ___  _ __ ___   ___     /  \   ___ ___ _ ___| |_ __ _ _ __ | |_ 
|  __  |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \   / /\ \ / __/ __| / __| __/ _` | '_ \| __|
| |  | | (_) | | | | | |  __/  / ____ \\__ \__ \ \__ \ || (_| | | | | |_ 
|_|  |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___| /_/    \_\___/___/_|___/\__\__,_|_| |_|\__|
                                                                         
Welcome on Home Assistant command line.

For more details use 'help' and 'exit' to close.
If you need access to host system use 'login'.

ha > login
# ls
# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root                99.3M     99.3M         0 100% /
devtmpfs                  1.9G         0      1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs                     1.9G         0      1.9G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                     1.9G    972.0K      1.9G   0% /run
tmpfs                     1.9G         0      1.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                     1.9G    972.0K      1.9G   0% /etc/machine-id
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /mnt/overlay
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/docker
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/dropbear
/dev/mmcblk0p1           31.9M      3.1M     28.8M  10% /mnt/boot
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/modprobe.d
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/modules-load.d
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/udev/rules.d
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /root/.docker
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /root/.ssh
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/hostname
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/hosts
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf
/dev/mmcblk0p8           57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data
/dev/zram1               31.0M    128.0K     28.6M   0% /var
/dev/zram2               15.5M     40.0K     14.3M   0% /tmp
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /var/lib/NetworkManager
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /var/lib/bluetooth
/dev/mmcblk0p8           57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker
/dev/mmcblk0p7           89.0M      1.7M     80.5M   2% /var/lib/systemd
/dev/mmcblk0p8           57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/log/journal
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/d49074cf7ba8794a3fd10aec42ada14998d6d4ba83a49e6a9ca0bdfb65f42c1f/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/d49074cf7ba8794a3fd10aec42ada14998d6d4ba83a49e6a9ca0bdfb65f42c1f/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/8cdba1c8db46d51dee975159a9b7fa7cb3d18223eb3012713f27fa6123498a96/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/8cdba1c8db46d51dee975159a9b7fa7cb3d18223eb3012713f27fa6123498a96/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/3fd7c3ead12c70f4036782ea5940b835a16a96d3cc070f83f2acfd1bf53a5ac5/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/3fd7c3ead12c70f4036782ea5940b835a16a96d3cc070f83f2acfd1bf53a5ac5/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/27e363795211c6936b65ca595c0106a28f5d7e7580e90fa05a7c1c6dc9e8d236/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/27e363795211c6936b65ca595c0106a28f5d7e7580e90fa05a7c1c6dc9e8d236/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/14cccae6732e2faebc6709ccd3f38845abd8103ca637021323718ca7632dce72/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/14cccae6732e2faebc6709ccd3f38845abd8103ca637021323718ca7632dce72/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/ca7334f1298eb070c4ba533a2a0652e0267ca2c372264d157a09a3071f25245c/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/ca7334f1298eb070c4ba533a2a0652e0267ca2c372264d157a09a3071f25245c/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/95c1c475e39ef24228b0697f77a0d6160b20f27920080ecb2d8309f9f1461f23/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/95c1c475e39ef24228b0697f77a0d6160b20f27920080ecb2d8309f9f1461f23/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/63638208b59aa8ce0f04f63fd5a05e64ea95f7647e523b5dd857e6cf96b11675/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/63638208b59aa8ce0f04f63fd5a05e64ea95f7647e523b5dd857e6cf96b11675/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/55beefe16792b04f567b39b66cb1e91f0085d7eef2ac6bf73694240201008e9c/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/55beefe16792b04f567b39b66cb1e91f0085d7eef2ac6bf73694240201008e9c/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /mnt/data/docker/overlay2/12b171482f63343fedfa77b2895f7c976d1cf37af8f7eec18e4c45ec4ae160d8/merged
overlay                  57.8G      4.3G     50.5G   8% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/12b171482f63343fedfa77b2895f7c976d1cf37af8f7eec18e4c45ec4ae160d8/merged
# lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    1  57.8G  0 disk 
`-sda1        8:1    1  57.8G  0 part 
mmcblk0     179:0    0  59.5G  0 disk 
|-mmcblk0p1 179:1    0    32M  0 part /mnt/boot
|-mmcblk0p2 179:2    0    24M  0 part 
|-mmcblk0p3 179:3    0   256M  0 part 
|-mmcblk0p4 179:4    0    24M  0 part 
|-mmcblk0p5 179:5    0   256M  0 part /
|-mmcblk0p6 179:6    0     8M  0 part 
|-mmcblk0p7 179:7    0    96M  0 part /mnt/overlay
`-mmcblk0p8 179:8    0  58.8G  0 part /mnt/data
zram0       254:0    0 976.1M  0 disk [SWAP]
zram1       254:1    0    32M  0 disk /var
zram2       254:2    0    16M  0 disk /tmp
# sudo mkdir /mnt/boot
/bin/ash: sudo: not found
# ls
#

francisp · August 2, 2020, 11:16am

SHH into the host

alex4p · August 2, 2020, 11:58am

Thanks, but this only tells me how to ssh and set up my rsa key which I have done. Unless I am missing something else

francisp · August 2, 2020, 12:06pm

You still need to ssh in and change config.txt

Here you login to the HA container, not to the host !

Front · December 14, 2020, 9:14pm

Okay, reviving an old thread. I am not big on SSH keys or jumping over the tallest part of the fence. I have a monitor and a keyboard, let’s go!

When you boot the Raspberry, you get the prompt with a terminal saying “home assistant login:”
Here you just type “root” and press enter. You are now at the “ha” shell where you can update the OS, update the backend and maybe a couple of other (very) limited things.
Ignore this and just type “login”.
Now you are at the base os’ shell terminal and can modify config.txt with the following command (and yes, there is only the vi editor - sigh!):

vi /mnt/boot/config.txt

Press the “Insert” button on your keyboard to regain a minimum of sanity and go to the end of the file.

Insert the RaspBee config text of your choice (I tried both to see what worked).

add an extra line at the end and press the esc key. This will enable commands in vi.
Type “:x” and press enter. This saves the file and exits. No warnings, no “are you sure”, just 70’s style confidence you know what you are doing. And with this guide, you do, and you are done

e-raser · January 2, 2021, 6:05pm

This is a good guide for accessing the config.txt when the SD card/SSD/whatever HASS OS is running on is put in another machine.

I´m wondering if and how it´s possible to access config.txt from a running HASS OS. That would speed up things a lot, even of course for changes done in config.txt taking effect a host reboot is required.

When trying to mount (from host SSH, not addon SSH) it just gives

mounting /dev/mmcblk0p8 on /mnt/boot failed: Resource busy

(/dev/mmcblk0p8 is the HASS OS device partition)

Not possible at all?

Update: Answered it by myself.

Using blkid gives available partitions, blkid | grep hassos-boot shows the partition number we´re looking for
So in my case mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/boot mounts the boot partition and…
…ls -lha /mnt/boot shows content, vi /mnt/boot/config.txt finally gives access to config.txt. Unfortunately there´s no nano and I hate that damn old vi but hey, that´s another story…

LDMaughan · February 7, 2021, 6:49pm

Thank you DWiskow for your tutorial, this helped me a lot. I only needed to alter the config.txt file to turn off the red power LED …

[pi4]
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off

…on my Pi4B so that I didn’t have a constant red glow in the corner of my room

dingausmwald · June 15, 2021, 2:25pm

Eeeehh… i just put the (ssd in my case) sd card to my windows computer, boot partition is available since its fat. Edit the config.txt with text editor. Same on Linux. Should even be possible with android phones. I know, its not from hassOS, but a quicky also.

e-raser · June 24, 2021, 10:12pm

Yeah… that´s what everyone can do. All the other ways are just… more sexy, less downtime, can be performed remotely without physical access, …

jumon · February 21, 2022, 4:54pm

You might want to modify “mint” to be “mnt” on these two lines to avoid confusion. Thanks for all the info!!

majorgear · April 12, 2023, 3:25am

When I type “login” I get another prompt

[core-ssh ~]$ login
core-ssh login:

What do I enter here?

extremecarver · April 6, 2024, 10:56pm

There seriously needs to be some improvement of accessing config.txt from boot partition. In windows 10 it doesn’t load because you cannot mount the paritition. I’ve tried various things for hours to access it and still didn’t succeed.
I can read it, and third party windows partitition managers can read the partitiion - yet none of them can mount it. If you go into windows partition manager - it will first thing format the full disk into an empty GPT drive.

I want to run home assistant from USB 3.0 nvme drive and need to add quirks (RTL 9210b chip). Usability sucks so bad I just want to throw that raspi in the next rubbish bin - yet the fault is all on home assistant.

documentation everywhere seems just outdated. SSH addon doesn’t allow to edit config.txt either.

So right now is the only way to edit it to install Raspberry Pi standard OS into another drive - then from there mount the nvme drive and try to change it? It’s simply ridiculous.

hahuzar · April 7, 2024, 7:58am

If the partition where config.txt is has type 0xEF00 (EFI System Parttion), Windows 10 refuses to mount it as far as I remember from old topic posts on RaspberryPi forum. You could set the partion type to 0x0700, which a Microsoft Basic or something like that. It is just what is used for FAT formatted partitions. A Pi4 and later can handle that from its bootloader (the EEPROM contents).

I am not sure if something in HAOS would set it back to 0xEF00 after first boot or so. I know from my installation on generic 64-bit ARM that it patches the GPT if the USBstick of SD-card or whatever blockdevice is larger than what is in the partition table.

But I must say that I never use Windows anymore for this kind of installation work which is all Linux. I hope you have some Linux available, 10 years ago I always used to have a Knoppix on a USBstick of CDROM with me, nowadays all my computer are multi-boot, almost never boot Windows, only for my paper scanner.

hahuzar · April 7, 2024, 8:40am

I was curious and downloaded https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/12.1/haos_rpi4-64-12.1.img.xz

I see it has a hybrid partition table setup. That is needed for ROM-only Pis, like Pi3 and earlier, but not for Pi4 and Pi5, they can perfectly boot from GPT-only (with still the usual protective MBR inplace.

In this hybrid setup, MBR partition1 is type 0xC0 (the usual default for FAT) but I see the GPT partition1 is 0x0C01 which is ‘Microsoft Reserved’. No surprise that this is guaranteed failure I think, so someone generating those images should get rid of this unusual method, at least for 64-bit Pi4 and newer. You could file a bug report, this kind of issues should not be there anymore, it is old wrong methods. Normal OS-images like RedHat 64-bit ARM have 1 image for all sorts of ARM SBC’s, for thet Pi it is actually very easy to have it generic as the EEPROM bootcode can read FAT. I have my Pi4 booting from a 0xEF00 first partition for ‘years’ already, you can actually stick the same SSD/NVME in a Windows/Intel laptop if you want. A Pi4 just needs a config.txt and some firmware files and DTB files. Those coexist with Windows x86_64 file in the ESP.

The problem is still that you need USB quirks, I know. I learned my lessons with Pi4. It looks like a cheap small computer, but it isn’t. You need to select and buy your own storage and roughly half of the USB3-to-SATA adapters have a problem. No UAS, no TRIM mostly. For NVME I don’t know, I bought a RK3588 device that has an M2 NVME connector onboard. And also eMMC 32GB storage onboard, booting is more simple but riskier then a Pi4.

extremecarver · April 7, 2024, 10:42am

I installed Raspberry Pi OS onto another USB drive - because that was mentioned sometimes (using the windows Raspberry Pi Imager software - same that I used to install Home Assistant Image to USB - as is the official way to install on Windows: Raspberry Pi - Home Assistant). Then booted it and inserted the usb drive with Home Assistant. I also cannot access that damn drive except the two partititions as it gives me an error. Not possible to mount.

Seems the only possibility right now is this: Debugging the Home Assistant Operating System | Home Assistant Developer Docs

It’s ridiculous that an end user has to do something not intended for endusers to get an NVME drive to work (and yeah all seem to need this). At the same time Raspberry Pi OS runs just fine using that same drive connected to USB 3.0. So Raspberry Pi OS is properly running those RTL9210b drives. So Home Assistant really needs to fix both things - treating the NVME enclosures correctly as any other OS does (because clearly it’s not a raspi5 problem and the quirk shouldn’t even be needed) and fixing access to config.txt in a reasonable way on all systems. First it was only Mac OS not possible, now it’s Windows, Mac OS, and Raspi OS (so I guess all Linux too) if installed the official way (now I don’t know if other ways format differently).

That’s the error I get on Raspberry Pi OS.

And here the missing 268MB boot partition - I can accees a 25MB drive with an image on it, and the hassos-data/ hassos-overlay that I can access via any system with ext4 support (so also windows)

I can actually manage to read the boot partition with Linux File systems for Windows by Paragon Software - but unable to write to them. No other tool I know manages to debug that Home Assistant formatting mess.

extremecarver · April 7, 2024, 12:03pm

Edit - I got too confused by this warning. After some more tries I was able to access the boot drive by mounting /dev/sdb1/ -it’s not automatic either but mountaing /dev/sdb1 then using sudo nano commanline.txt I could finally addt hose lines. It really shouldn’t be needed hoever as Raspi OS does everything correctly and I have about 365MB/s read speed, 215MB/s write speed on Raspberry OS via USB 3 connector. Not sure about the speed in Home Assistant with the quirk. I guess quite a bit slower.

sonite · April 20, 2024, 9:01am

Since HAOS 12, how can I access the config.txt on a Rapberry Pi5?
df -h

Gives:
overlay and a lot of /dev/mmcblk0p8