Locked out: How to access file system to delete auth files?

[Banzai]

Hey there, happy new year!

So I screwed up: a couple of months ago i bought HA blue to play around with in the new place i moved into yesterday and now I cant use it because apparently I set up an account and didn’t write down the details when I “tested it out real quick”.

I looked at this page:

I'm locked out!

and it seems the only applicable solution for me is to start a new onboarding process. But how do I access the file system to delete these files?

I found this thread:

Completely locked out of home-assistant on rpi4

I don’t remember if I noticed this the first time I installed but I tried to access my instance via http://hassio.local:8123 and was met by a login page. I tried multiple users and passwords but none would let me in. I found a guide to reset the client password by deleting some files but I don’t have access to that either. SSH’ing gives me an “access denied (public-key,keyboard-interactive)” error and so I try to follow the guide for creating new keys but that seems to require adding the authori…

Which links to another thread and some documentation. Seems I need an addon to access the file system, is that correct?

The question then becomes how do I install an addon if I can’t access anything. I tried using the cli but can’t find the command to do it from there.

any help? it would suck to have basically bricked this thing.

[tom_l]

@Banzai

Seems I need an addon to access the file system, is that correct?

Well that is two ways, either by using the SSH or Samba addons.

You can also connect a keyboard and display directly to the host machine to access the CLI.

[mobile.andrew.jones (Andrew Jones)]

To start a new onboarding process:

ha addons install core_ssh
ha addons start core_ssh

Then ssh in to Home Assistant, and

rm -rf /config/.storage

Reboot and you will be back to the onboarding process in the WebUI.

[Banzai]

Okay but I don’t have ssh installed yet. Or does that come preinstalled? If so, how/where do I enter the rm command?

I’m sorry for the noobie questions.

[Banzai]

Yes I have been able to enter the cli with a keyboard and monitor, but I don’t know where to go from there. I know there is “ha addons”, but how do I install either ssh or samba with it?

[tom_l]

Andrew just told you how to install the ssh addon above. However as you have access to the cli just do step 3 to start a new onboarding process,

[Banzai]

oof yeah I’m an idiot. Thought that was reinstalling the ha core. Trying it now.

[Banzai]

okay hopefully last question: how do i “ssh in to home assistant”? I don’t know where to enter the rm command.

[tom_l]

You don’t have to if you have CLI access via the Keyboard and monitor.

[Banzai]

Well simply typing the rm command into the ha cli does not work.

Thank you for the quick responses btw!

[mobile.andrew.jones (Andrew Jones)]

You need to type login first to get to a proper linux prompt

EDIT:
On my install of Home Assistant (which is a virtual machine running Home Assistant OS) - the .storage directory is at:

/mnt/data/supervisor/homeassistant/.storage

[Banzai]

Yes, it was the second path that worked! Thank you so much!

[tom_l]

Now that you are back in you might want to go through the items on this list:

Common Tasks - Operating System