How to install earlier versions of Mosquitto?

Prickles · December 16, 2025, 6:56am

I’m running 2025.12.3 and Mosquitto 6.0.2
I have arduinos and ESP modules in remote locations all over the place and only a few have OTA access. Accessing and re-programming all of them will be a long term project, so when the next mosquitto update stopped talking to the devices I simply restored 6.0.2 and haven’t updated since…
I now find I have to update for newer devices but when I installed 6.5.2 it didn’t want to talk to anything (not even MQTT Explorer!) and anonymous clients are not an option.
Is there a way to install earlier versions with user/pwd options that will also take anonymous clients while I track down and reprogram all my devices?

Thanks in advance.

Troon · December 16, 2025, 7:23am

Anonymous login was removed from the HA add-on ages ago, as you are aware:

github.com/home-assistant/addons

Anonymous logins removed from Mosquitto Add-on

opened 09:59AM - 21 Aug 22 UTC

closed 01:49PM - 22 Aug 22 UTC

DCSBL

### Describe the issue you are experiencing I have some wifi devices that can c…onnect to a MQTT broker, but they do not provide a way to set an username/password nor they have one. Because of this I get this error: ``` 1661075134: Sending CONNACK to ::ffff:192.168.5.152 (0, 5) 1661075134: Client <unknown> closed its connection. error: received null username or password for unpwd check ``` After looking around a bit, I saw that [this PR](https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/pull/2007) removed support for anonymous logins, why? Why can't we just add the `allow_anonymous true` config in the customise part? Or is it not as easy as it seems? ### What type of installation are you running? Home Assistant OS ### Which operating system are you running on? Home Assistant Operating System ### Which add-on are you reporting an issue with? Mosquitto broker ### What is the version of the add-on? 6.1.2 ### Steps to reproduce the issue 1. Rewritten a DNS record so the device tries to make a connection to the Mosquitto add-on 2. Saw that the device was able to connect 3. Saw that the device was not able to authenticate, connection was disconnected. ``` logins: [] require_certificate: false certfile: fullchain.pem keyfile: privkey.pem customize: active: true folder: mosquitto ``` ``` # acl.conf allow_anonymous true acl_file /share/mosquitto/accesscontrollist ``` ``` # accesscontrollist topic readwrite # ``` ### Anything in the Supervisor logs that might be useful for us? _No response_ ### Anything in the add-on logs that might be useful for us? ```txt ... 1661075508: Sending CONNACK to ::ffff:192.168.5.152 (0, 5) 1661075508: Client <unknown> closed its connection. error: received null username or password for unpwd check 1661075524: Sending CONNACK to ::ffff:192.168.5.152 (0, 5) 1661075524: Client <unknown> closed its connection. 1661075528: New connection from 172.30.32.2:39318 on port 1883. 1661075528: Client <unknown> closed its connection. error: received null username or password for unpwd check 1661075540: Sending CONNACK to ::ffff:192.168.5.152 (0, 5) 1661075540: Client <unknown> closed its connection. error: received null username or password for unpwd check 1661075556: Sending CONNACK to ::ffff:192.168.5.152 (0, 5) 1661075556: Client <unknown> closed its connection. error: received null username or password for unpwd check ... ``` ### Additional information _No response_

Add-ons are not version-controlled, so the only way to do it is via restoring a backup, which will affect your whole system. If you want to do something that the add-on doesn’t support, move it out of HA.

I run the eclipse-moquitto Docker image separately on my NAS with the allow_anonymous option turned on. As I run HA in a Docker container, I don’t even have the option of add-ons and have never missed it…

Prickles · December 16, 2025, 11:33pm

Thanks for that Troon, a replacement broker seems like the only way forward.

tmjpugh · December 17, 2025, 2:07am

Docker or bare metal install of mosquitto you can install any available version.

You can always change your HA install or run mosquitto on separate PC like RasPi

Prickles · December 17, 2025, 5:46am

Thanks tmjpugh, think I’ll run new Broker in Docker or on a spare RPi - BUT - all my devices will be sending their MQTT traffic to my HASSIO’s IP address, will I need to set up a route/port forward to direct that traffic to the IP of the new broker?

Troon · December 17, 2025, 8:49am

You’ll need to do something, yes. Depending what other devices you have, it may be easier to move HA’s IP address and set up the broker at the old IP…

tmjpugh · December 17, 2025, 1:55pm

Run 2 broker or change ip

Result will be same
I would run 2 and plan slow migration to password