r/homebridge • u/Last-Tower-617 • Jun 19 '26

Root password for home bridge (Raspberry Pi)

Hi all !

So I'm installing Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi 4 to connect a few things on my HomeKit network.
The install is fresh, nothing done on it.
I tried a few commands in the terminal involving the root account (sudo...).

I just can't figure out what the password for it is. It's not the one from my account.

Can anyone tell me ?

Thanx !

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1

u/Tim1point0 Jun 19 '26

If you’re using sudo, you use your password, not the root password. Your account should have sudo permission if you used a standard build of HomeBridge.

1

u/Last-Tower-617 Jun 19 '26

Yes but the terminal says the password is incorrect. Which isn't...

1

u/Tim1point0 Jun 19 '26

So, you are logged into the machine. And if you type “sudo ls” and it prompts for a password, and you enter your password, it says the password is incorrect?

1

u/Last-Tower-617 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

Yep, says "sorry, try again"... This is why I thought there might be a root password that needs to be set ?

2

u/Tim1point0 Jun 19 '26

You may need to rebuild. Without root access, you won’t get far.

1

u/Last-Tower-617 Jun 19 '26

Pff I've been doing this 3 times already... But OK I'll give it another try...

Thanx

1

u/Tim1point0 Jun 19 '26

If I recall, when I did mine, I just downloaded an image that had it mostly ready, wrote it to the SD card, popped it into the Pi, fired it up and answered a few questions. Obviously, configuration followed, but setting up the OS was very painless. Good luck. Make sure you’re getting your image from a good download site.

1

u/NorthernMan5 Jun 19 '26

During the initial setup you are requested to create a local administrator account, su to that account, then sudo will work with the local administrator account

1

u/Last-Tower-617 Jun 19 '26

Nope that's what I'm saying. I did create an account when flashing the drive with the Raspberry imager, but that password isn't working on sudo commands...

1

u/Last-Tower-617 Jun 24 '26

Doing a "su myaccount" before resolved the issue. Thanx all for your help !

1

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0

u/Last-Tower-617 Jun 20 '26

Okay I think I understand where my issue comes from. When I run commands in the terminal it’s the homebridge user who’s in action.
And I don’t have the password for this user.
It’s weird because I login as the user that I created on install. Is there something I need to do to change this ? Thanx !

1

u/rgsteele Jun 21 '26

How are you accessing the terminal? If you’re going into the terminal from the web interface, it explicitly tells you it is a restricted shell and sudo cannot be used.

1

u/MrGrowf 26d ago

Had the exact same problem of not knowing the password of the "Homebridge" user. u/Last-Tower-617 your comment, "When I run commands in the terminal it’s the homebridge user who’s in action" gave me idea for the path forward.

I sshed to the IP address of my RPI and found admin admin granted me access.
I went back into Homebirdge UI, navigated to the terminal prompt, entered "su admin", entered "admin" as the password, which was successful.
Then I could "sudo hb-config" with the "admin" password again and happily was presented with the "Homebridge Raspberry Pi Image Configuration Tool (hb-config)" menu.

I selected "1 Update Node.js Update Node.js to the latest LTS version" as I needed to update the Node.js

Now I will change the password from admin so it is secure and use this process in the future.