SSH removed from Cerbo 3.81?

So this cropped up for me last week and I've been quietly going mad trying to work out if it's just my setup or a wider change.

Updated my Cerbo GX to 3.81 and suddenly my usual SSH workflow is completely gone. I access mine fairly regularly — mainly to keep an eye on the data flowing between the Cerbo and my Fogstar battery bank out in the garden office — so this isn't a trivial inconvenience for me.

Previously it was dead simple: Settings → General, enable SSH, set a password, done. Now that option has just... vanished. No warning in the release notes that I could find, no obvious replacement.

A bit of digging suggests Victron may have shifted things around — possibly moving SSH access into the Remote Console or tying it more tightly to VRM portal authentication. But I haven't managed to confirm that definitively yet.

Has anyone else running 3.81 managed to get SSH working again? And does anyone know if this was an intentional security hardening decision on Victron's part?

I'm also slightly curious whether this affects the Venus OS Large image differently, since I know some folks here run that for the Node-RED and Signal K integrations.

For context, my use case is fairly niche — I've got EV charging tied into the system and I use SSH occasionally to poke at custom scripts — so losing that access is a proper headache rather than just a mild annoyance.

Would love to know if there's a workaround before I consider rolling back the firmware entirely.

@LindaLamb this is a known change — Victron moved SSH access behind a deliberate enable toggle rather than leaving it on by default. Go to Settings → General → SSH on LAN and switch it on. It persists across reboots but resets if you do a factory reset.

Worth noting: if you're scripting against the Cerbo (I pull battery stats from my Fogstar cells via MQTT into a Pi for my static caravan monitoring), you'll want to check your known_hosts entry too — the host key may have regenerated during the update and your SSH client will throw a fit.

This isn't in the 3.81 release notes prominently, which is frankly typical. Had to dig through the Victron Community forum to find the buried changelog line.

@LindaLamb to add to what @KentBoater said — you'll find the toggle under Settings → General → Remote Support on the Cerbo itself, or via VRM if you've got remote console access. Once you flip it on, SSH should come back on port 22 as normal with the standard root/no-password setup (assuming you're on a local network).

Worth noting it doesn't persist across firmware updates, so if you upgrade again you'll need to re-enable it each time. Bit of a nuisance if you've got automated scripts relying on it, but I can see why Victron made the change from a security standpoint — plenty of these units end up internet-facing without owners realising.