MQTT Server With SSL

Configuration
1

To start this post I want to say that I have searched the forum and found loads of posts. I’ve also done a lot of Googling. I can’t find the answer to my question(s) and worryingly the posts I have found that come close either don’t have an answer or finish with the OP saying words to the effect of “I couldn’t get it to work”.

I have built a Mosquitto MQTT server on a Digital Ocean droplet. The SSL is provided by a Let’s Encrypt certificate. That is, it’s not self signed. My reason for this is long and involved but it involves data collection from sensors outside my home network.

To this server I have successfully connected

  • OwnTracks on my phone
  • ESP32 clients located in a field
  • A RPi on my home network running Zigbee2MQTT

And some other bits. Point is, I have

mosquitto_sub -h localhost -t '#'

running on the server and I can see a steady stream of these devices connecting and publishing without a problem.

But I can’t get HA to connect to this server. If I try and do it through the integration I get “Connection failed” and

[paho.mqtt.client] failed to receive on socket: [Errno 104] Connection reset by peer

In the log. If I go back to basics and configure it in the YAML, the log fills up with

[homeassistant.components.mqtt] The 'broker' option near /config/configuration.yaml:13 is deprecated, please remove it from your configuration

And it doesn’t connect. I remember in the days when we had to do everything with YAML you could specify keys like certificate: auto or specify paths to certificates but any of those options just cause the “deprecated” warning above and, since I’m using a LE certificate should theoretically not be needed.

Is there something else I need to do to get HA to connect to MQTT with SSL? This is Home Assistant OS 2022.5.4 by the way.

Thanks

Steve

2

You need to do yaml “manual” setup.
SSL is considered advanced and cannot be done in UI

3

As I said - if I do that the log fills up with

[homeassistant.components.mqtt] The 'broker' option near /config/configuration.yaml:13 is deprecated, please remove it from your configuration

And MQTT isn’t set up.

4

Looks like you do the ui setup but also add the cert in your config

5

Well, that’s not clear at all. I added
mqtt:
certificate: auto

And nothing else and now it’s working. Thanks for pointing that out.

1 Like
6

Many thx, @stetho ! I experiences exactly the same and thx to you thread, I found the solution.

7

Hi,

have you still successfully integrated your external mqtt broker today?

I’m running HA 2023.6 where the yaml config is invalid and I can’t figure out how to connect to an MQTT server with TLS enabled via the UI.
Everything I tried so far unfortunately results in the generic error message ‘Connection failed’ and I have absolutely no idea what else I should do. Other apps can talk to the mqtt broker just fine. It’s just HA that somehow refuses to connect.

8

Did you ever get this working? I also have an MQTT broker set up on Digital Ocean for my Personal Weather Station - it publishes data every 2s to my weather station website, and works very well. I want to bring that same data into my HA set up - but am a HA newbie. Any help you can give on what I have to put in my YAML file would be much appreciated, as I can’t see much detail on the HA MQTT documentation. Many Thanks. David.

9

What detail were you looking for?

Also did you read the thread? he says he fixed in the 4 or so post

10

Hi - thanks for your reply. Yes, I saw all the posts. I guess by detail, I mean what exactly do I need to put in the YAML file and where do I set the server name etc. Sorry, am probably just being dumb, as not used MQTT in WA before, and am new to HA anyway. I use my MQTT broker as part of a “weewx” implementation on a RPi for my personal weather station. The config file for weewx has the following code for the MQTT implementation:

server_url = XXXXX
        topic = weather
        unit_system = METRICWX
        aggregation = aggregate
        binding = archive, loop
        log_success = False
        log_failure = True
        [[[tls]]]
            tls_version = tlsv1
            ca_certs = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

Any help you can give would be much appreciated.

Many Thanks.

11

Sorry, I should add that the implementation for my weather station website also has the following in another config file:

 mqtt_websockets_enabled = 1
          mqtt_websockets_host = <<domain name for my MQTT broker>>
          mqtt_websockets_port = 9001
          mqtt_websockets_ssl = 1
          mqtt_websockets_topic = "weather/loop"
          disconnect_live_website_visitor = 1800000