SSH stopped recognising homeassistant.local but IP address still OK

Configuration
1

Hi all,

Its been a while since I used SSH to connect to HA from my PC.
Recently I tried again and while I can connect using the IP address, I cannot connect using homeassistant.local.

The previous time I connected with SSH it it worked fine, but Ive probably made a lot of changes since the… Im not sure if one of those affected something, or if I’ve just forgotten how to connect properly!

My HA is a Home Assistant Green.

I have the Advanced SSH & Web Terminal add-on set up and configured from before I last successfully connected via SSH. The configuration there has my user name and authorized key is the pub key that I have on my PC.

My public and private key exist on my PC in wsl in ~/.shh

When I try to connect now it goes as follows:

~❯ ssh [email protected] -v -i ./ssh/homeassistant
OpenSSH_9.6p1 Ubuntu-3ubuntu13.13, OpenSSL 3.0.13 30 Jan 2024
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: include /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/*.conf matched no files
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 21: Applying options for *
ssh: Could not resolve hostname homeassistant.local: Name or service not known

~❯ ssh [email protected] -i .ssh/homeassistant

       ▄██▄           _   _
     ▄██████▄        | | | | ___  _ __ ___   ___
   ▄████▀▀████▄      | |_| |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \
 ▄█████    █████▄    |  _  | (_) | | | | | |  __/
▄██████▄  ▄██████▄   |_| |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___|          _
████████  ██▀  ▀██      / \   ___ ___(_)___| |_ __ _ _ __ | |_
███▀▀███  ██   ▄██     / _ \ / __/ __| / __| __/ _` | '_ \| __|
██    ██  ▀ ▄█████    / ___ \\__ \__ \ \__ \ || (_| | | | | |_
███▄▄ ▀█  ▄███████   /_/   \_\___/___/_|___/\__\__,_|_| |_|\__|
▀█████▄   ███████▀

Welcome to the Home Assistant command line interface.

Home Assistant Supervisor is running!
System information:
  IPv4 addresses for end0:  192.168.1.13/24
  IPv6 addresses for end0: my-ipv6-address

  OS Version:               Home Assistant OS 16.2
  Home Assistant Core:      2025.9.4

  Home Assistant URL:       http://homeassistant.local:8123
  Observer URL:             http://homeassistant.local:4357

System is ready! Use browser or app to configure.
➜  ~

Some changes that may have been since I last successfully used SSH:

  • Set a static IP address in router and HA
  • Configured HA with remote access via cloudflared add-on]
  • A whole bundle of version updates

Is there any more information that could be useful to troubleshoot this?
Has anyone seen this before or have an idea what might cause this?

Thanks!

2

.local domains are just a way to translate a domain name to an IP address.
.local is handled by mDNS, which is a serverless protocol, so each client handle its announcements itself.
If you can not use homeassistant.local, then mDNS might have issues on your HA Green or you have changed the homeassistant part by changing the server name field under network settings.

1 Like
3

Coming back to this as I finally have some time to play with HA again.

Many thanks for your reply @WallyR as this pointed me in the right direction of checking the network settings within HA. There I saw the following:

So, trying with the hostname of homeassistant (rather than the URL homeassistant.local)
I get successful login!

~❯ ssh my-username@homeassistant -i .ssh/homeassistant
The authenticity of host 'homeassistant (192.168.1.22)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is 123
This host key is known by the following other names/addresses:
    ~/.ssh/known_hosts:5: [hashed name]
    ~/.ssh/known_hosts:7: [hashed name]
    ~/.ssh/known_hosts:8: [hashed name]
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'homeassistant' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.

       ▄██▄           _   _
     ▄██████▄        | | | | ___  _ __ ___   ___
   ▄████▀▀████▄      | |_| |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \
 ▄█████    █████▄    |  _  | (_) | | | | | |  __/
▄██████▄  ▄██████▄   |_| |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___|          _
████████  ██▀  ▀██      / \   ___ ___(_)___| |_ __ _ _ __ | |_
███▀▀███  ██   ▄██     / _ \ / __/ __| / __| __/ _` | '_ \| __|
██    ██  ▀ ▄█████    / ___ \\__ \__ \ \__ \ || (_| | | | | |_
███▄▄ ▀█  ▄███████   /_/   \_\___/___/_|___/\__\__,_|_| |_|\__|
▀█████▄   ███████▀

Welcome to the Home Assistant command line interface.

Home Assistant Supervisor is running!
System information:
  IPv4 addresses for end0:  192.168.1.22/24
  IPv6 addresses for end0:  m-ipv6-address

  OS Version:               Home Assistant OS 16.3
  Home Assistant Core:      2025.12.2

  Home Assistant URL:       http://homeassistant.local:8123
  Observer URL:             http://homeassistant.local:4357

System is ready! Use browser or app to configure.
➜  ~

Now my remaining question - is this as expected? Does this match the “defaults” for a vanilla HA install?
(I cannot recall if I have changed something here or not)

4

When you just type homeassistant, then it is assumed it is a hostname and the DNS will add its search domain after it and try to look it up through the DNS server.
This means you are making a DNS lookup for homeassistant.yourDNSserverDomain and not homeassistant.local, which is the mDNS hostname.

Personally I prefer a DNS hostname over a mDNS hostname, because I know the DNS server is the culprit if something is wrong.
The problem is that some integrations might require mDNS to work.

1 Like