As described in the introduction, I have Home Assistant OS set up on a Proxmox Virtual Machine. I’m planning to build a custom tablet dashboard to control my system, and for that, I wanted to upload custom backgrounds and other images from my home PC to a server location that HA is able to access. May sound simple, but I had no idea how to do that. I found out that I have to set up an SSH server which can be used to upload files.
1. Install Terminal & SSH add-on
‘Terminal & SSH’ add-on appears to be the most recommended add-on to use. To find it, you first need to make sure ‘Advanced mode’ is enabled in your profile settings.
Then navigate to ‘Settings > Add-ons’ and click the blue ‘Add-on store’ button on the lower right corner. Search for ‘Terminal & SSH Add-on’ and install it.
Make sure ‘Start on boot’ is selected and click the START button.
2. Configure Terminal & SSH
Select ‘Configuration’ tab on the top of the page.
These are the settings I’m using:
On the ‘Network’ section, you have to click ‘Show disabled ports’ to be able to assign a port. Don’t forget to save your settings on each section after you’re done and restart the add-on when asked to do so.
3. SSH client
On my Windows PC I have WinSCP already so I’m going to use it to establish the connection. You can of course use any similar software. These are the settings I have for the connection:
Be sure to replace the ‘Host name’ with the IP of you HA installation. At this point you should know your IP, but if in doubt, it can be seen from the Proxmox VM summary, your router settings or possibly in ‘Settings > System > Network > Network adapter’ section. After logging in, you should be transferred to the root folder of your server.
4. Upload location
In my case, Home Assistant is installed in /root/homeassistant/. Depending on the use case, you are now able to upload images (or any files) here or any subfolders for Home Assistant to utilize.
And there you have it, this is how I managed to establish an SSH connection on my HA installation. Please let me know in the comment section if you’re having problems with your setup, or if you have any advice for dummies like me 🙂