Community Hass.io Add-ons: SSH - Secure Shell

This add-on allows you to log in to your Hass.io Home Assistant instance using SSH.

About

This add-on allows you to log in to your Hass.io Home Assistant instance using SSH, giving you to access your Hass.io folders and also includes a command-line tool to do things like restart, update, and check your instance.

This is an enhanced version of the provided SSH add-on by Home Assistant and focusses on security, usability and flexibility.

Features

This add-on, of course, provides an SSH server, based on OpenSSH. Additionally, it comes out of the box with the following:

• A secure default configuration of SSH:
  • Only allows login by the configured user, even if more users are created.
  • Only uses known secure ciphers and algorithms.
  • Limits login attempts to hold of brute-force attacks better.
  • Many more security tweaks, this addon passes all ssh-audit checks without warnings!
• Comes with compatibility mode option to allow older clients to connect.
• SFTP support is disabled by default but is user configurable.
• Compatible if Hass.io was installed via the generic Linux installer.
• Username is configurable, so root is no longer mandatory.
• Persists custom SSH client settings & keys between add-on restarts
• Log levels for allowing you to triage issues easier.
• Have custom Alpine packages installed on start. This allows you to install your favorite tools, which will be available every single time you log in.
• Execute custom commands on add-on start so that you can customize the shell to your likings.
• ZSH as its default shell. Easier to use for the beginner, more advanced for the more experienced user. It even comes preloaded with "Oh My ZSH", with some plugins enabled as well.
• Contains a sensible set of tools right out of the box: curl, Wget, RSync, GIT, Nmap, Mosquitto client, MariaDB/MySQL client, Awake (“wake on LAN”), Nano, Vim, tmux, and a bunch commonly used networking tools.

Installation

The installation of this add-on is pretty straightforward and not different in comparison to installing any other Hass.io add-on.

1. If you installed the "SSH server" add-on from the built-in add-on, then remove that one first.
2. Add our Hass.io add-ons repository to your Hass.io instance.
3. Install the "SSH - Secure Shell" add-on.
4. Configure the username and password/authorized_keys options.
5. Start the "SSH - Secure Shell" add-on.
6. Check the logs of the "SSH - Secure Shell" add-on to see if everything went well.

NOTE: Do not add this repository to Hass.io, please use: https://github.com/hassio-addons/repository.

Docker status

Configuration

Note: Remember to restart the add-on when the configuration is changed.

SSH add-on configuration:

{
  "log_level": "info",
  "port": 22,
  "username": "hassio",
  "password": "",
  "authorized_keys": [
    "ssh-rsa AASDJKJKJFWJFAFLCNALCMLAK234234....."
  ],
  "sftp": false,
  "compatibility_mode": false,
  "allow_agent_forwarding": false,
  "allow_remote_port_forwarding": false,
  "allow_tcp_forwarding": false,
  "packages": [
    "python",
    "python-dev",
    "py-pip",
    "build-base"
  ],
  "init_commands": [
    "pip install virtualenv",
    "pip install yamllint"
  ]
}

Note: This is just an example, don't copy and past it! Create your own!

Option: log_level

The log_level option controls the level of log output by the addon and can be changed to be more or less verbose, which might be useful when you are dealing with an unknown issue. Possible values are:

• trace: Show every detail, like all called internal functions.
• debug: Shows detailed debug information.
• info: Normal (usually) interesting events.
• warning: Exceptional occurrences that are not errors.
• error: Runtime errors that do not require immediate action.
• fatal: Something went terribly wrong. Add-on becomes unusable.

Please note that each level automatically includes log messages from a more severe level, e.g., debug also shows info messages. By default, the log_level is set to info, which is the recommended setting unless you are troubleshooting.

Using trace or debug log levels puts the SSH daemon into debug mode. While SSH is running in debug mode, it will be only able to accept one single connection at the time.

Option: port

The default port for SSH is 22, some security guides recommend to change the port to something else. Sometimes you'd just like to have it on another port. Remember, if you change to port, be sure it is not in use already!

Option: username

This option allows you to change to username the use when you log in via SSH. It is only utilized for the authentication; you will be the root user after you have authenticated. Using root as the username is possible, but not recommended.

Note: Due to limitations, you will need to set this option to root in order to be able to enable the SFTP capabilities.

Option: password

Sets the password to log in with. Leaving it empty would disable the possibility to authenticate with a password. We would highly recommend not to use this option from a security point of view.

Option: authorized_keys

Add one or more public keys to your SSH server to use with authentication. This is the recommended over setting a password.

Please take a look at the awesome documentation created by GitHub about using public/private key pairs and how to create them.

Option: sftp

When set to true the addon will enable SFTP support on the SSH daemon. Please only enable it when you plan on using it.

Note: Due to limitations, you will need to set the username to root in order to be able to enable the SFTP capabilities.

Option: compatibility_mode

This SSH add-on focusses on security and has therefore only enabled known secure encryption methods. However, some older clients does not support these. Setting this option to true will enable the original default set of methods, allowing those clients to connect.

Note: Enabling this option, lowers the security of your SSH server!

Option: allow_agent_forwarding

Specifies whether ssh-agent forwarding is permitted or not.

Note: Enabling this option, lowers the security of your SSH server! Nevertheless, this warning is debatable.

Option: allow_remote_port_forwarding

Specifies whether remote hosts are allowed to connect to ports forwarded for the client.

Note: Enabling this affects all remote forwardings, so think carefully before doing this.

Option: allow_tcp_forwarding

Specifies whether TCP forwarding is permitted or not.

Note: Enabling this option, lowers the security of your SSH server! Nevertheless, this warning is debatable.

Option: packages

Allows you to specify additional Alpine packages to be installed in your shell environment (e.g., Python, Joe, Irssi).

Note: Adding many packages will result in a longer start-up time for the add-on.

Option: init_commands

Customize your shell environment even more with the init_commands option. Add one or more shell commands to the list, and they will be executed every single time this add-on starts.

Known issues and limitations

• When SFTP is enabled, the username MUST be set to root.

Changelog & Releases

This repository keeps a change log using GitHub's releases functionality. The format of the log is based on Keep a Changelog.

Releases are based on Semantic Versioning, and use the format of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. In a nutshell, the version will be incremented based on the following:

• MAJOR: Incompatible or major changes.
• MINOR: Backwards-compatible new features and enhancements.
• PATCH: Backwards-compatible bugfixes and package updates.

Support

Got questions?

You have several options to get them answered:

• The Home Assistant Community Forum, we have a dedicated topic on that forum regarding this add-on.
• The Home Assistant Discord Chat Server for general Home Assistant discussions and questions.
• Join the Reddit subreddit in /r/homeassistant

You could also open an issue here GitHub.

Contributing

This is an active open-source project. We are always open to people who want to use the code or contribute to it.

We have set up a separate document containing our contribution guidelines.

Thank you for being involved! 😍

Authors & contributors

The original setup of this repository is by Franck Nijhof.

For a full list of all authors and contributors, check the contributor's page.

We have got some Hass.io add-ons for you

Want some more functionality to your Hass.io Home Assistant instance?

We have created multiple add-ons for Hass.io. For a full list, check out our GitHub Repository.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2017 Franck Nijhof

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.