Generic x86-64

Install Home Assistant Operating System

Follow this guide if you want to get started with Home Assistant easily or if you have little to no Linux experience.

Configure the BIOS on your x86-64 hardware

To boot Home Assistant OS, the BIOS needs to have UEFI boot mode enabled and Secure Boot disabled. The following screenshots are from a 7th generation Intel NUC system. The BIOS menu will likely look different on your systems. However, the options should still be present and named similarly.

1. To enter the BIOS, start up your x86-64 hardware and repeatedly press the F2 key (on some systems this might be Del, F1 or F10).

2. Make sure the UEFI Boot mode is enabled.

3. Disable Secure Boot.

4. Save the changes and exit.

• The BIOS configuration is complete.

As a next step, we need to write the Home Assistant Operating System image to the target boot medium. The HAOS has no integrated installer. This means the Operating System is not copied automatically to the internal disk.

• The “boot medium” is the medium your x86-64 hardware will boot from when it is running Home Assistant.
• Typically, an internal medium is used for the x86-64 hardware. Examples of internal media are S-ATA hard disk, S-ATA SSD, M.2 SSD, or a non-removable eMMC.
• Alternatively, an external medium can be used to boot HAOS such as a USB SDD (not recommended).

To install the HAOS internally on your x86-64 hardware, there are 2 methods:

1. Copying the HAOS disk image from your Desktop computer onto your boot medium (e.g. by using a USB to S-ATA adapter). This is not an option for a non-removable eMMC on your x86-64 hardware, of course. To use this method, follow the steps described in the procedure below: Write the image to your boot media.
2. Copying a live operating system (e.g. Ubuntu) onto a USB device. Then, insert this USB device into your x86-64 hardware and start the Ubuntu.

• To use this method, follow the instructions of your Live distribution (e.g., this Ubuntu guide). Once you booted the live operating system, follow the steps described in the procedure below: Write the image to your boot media.

Write the image to your boot media

1. Attach the Home Assistant boot media (storage device) to your computer

2. Download and start Balena Etcher. (You may need to run it with administrator privileges on Windows).

3. Select “Flash from URL”

4. Get the URL for your Generic x86-64:

https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/8.1/haos_generic-x86-64-8.1.img.xz

Select and copy the URL or use the “copy” button that appear when you hover it.

1. Paste the URL for your Generic x86-64 into Balena Etcher and click “OK”
2. Balena Etcher will now download the image, when that is done click “Select target”
3. Select the storage device you want to use for your Generic x86-64
4. Click on “Flash!” to start writing the image
5. When Balena Etcher is finished writing the image you will get this confirmation

Start up your Generic x86-64

1. If you used your desktop system to write the HAOS your boot media, install the boot media (storage device) in the generic-x86-64 system.

• If you used a live operating system (e.g. Ubuntu), shut down the live operating system and make sure to remove the USB flash drive you used for the live system.

2. Make sure an Ethernet cable is plugged in for network.

3. Power the system on.

   • Wait for the Home Assistant welcome banner to show up in the console of the generic-x86-64 system.

4. In the browser of your Desktop system, within a few minutes you will be able to reach your new Home Assistant on homeassistant.local:8123.

• If you are running an older Windows version or have a stricter network configuration, you might need to access Home Assistant at homeassistant:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your Generic x86-64’s IP address).

With the Home Assistant Operating System installed and accessible you can continue with onboarding.

Install Home Assistant Container

These below instructions are for an installation of Home Assistant Container running in your own container environment, which you manage yourself. Any OCI compatible runtime can be used, however this guide will focus on installing it with Docker.

Platform Installation

Installation with Docker is straightforward. Adjust the following command so that:

• /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG points at the folder where you want to store your configuration and run it.

• MY_TIME_ZONE is a tz database name, like TZ=America/Los_Angeles.

  Install

  Update

  docker run -d \
    --name homeassistant \
    --privileged \
    --restart=unless-stopped \
    -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \
    -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \
    --network=host \
    ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
  

  # if this returns "Image is up to date" then you can stop here
  docker pull ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
  

  # stop the running container
  docker stop homeassistant
  

  # remove it from Docker's list of containers
  docker rm homeassistant
  

  # finally, start a new one
  docker run -d \
    --name homeassistant \
    --restart=unless-stopped \
    --privileged \
    -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \
    -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \
    --network=host \
    ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
  

  Once the Home Assistant Container is running Home Assistant should be accessible using http://<host>:8123 (replace with the hostname or IP of the system). You can continue with onboarding.

  Onboarding

  Restart Home Assistant

  If you change the configuration you have to restart the server. To do that you have 3 options.

  1. In your Home Assistant UI go to the Settings -> System and click the “Restart” button.
  2. You can go to the Developer Tools -> Services, select the service homeassistant.restart and click “Call Service”.
  3. Restart it from a terminal.
  Docker CLI

  Docker Compose

  docker restart homeassistant
  

  docker-compose restart
  

  Docker Compose

  In order to use docker-compose you first need to install docker-compose on your system.

  As the Docker command becomes more complex, switching to docker-compose can be preferable and support automatically restarting on failure or system restart. Create a docker-compose.yml file:

    version: '3'
    services:
      homeassistant:
        container_name: homeassistant
        image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable"
        volumes:
          - /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config
          - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
        restart: unless-stopped
        privileged: true
        network_mode: host
  

  Start it by running:

  docker-compose up -d
  

  Once the Home Assistant Container is running Home Assistant should be accessible using http://<host>:8123 (replace with the hostname or IP of the system). You can continue with onboarding.

  Onboarding

  Exposing Devices

  In order to use Z-Wave, Zigbee or other integrations that require access to devices, you need to map the appropriate device into the container. Ensure the user that is running the container has the correct privileges to access the /dev/tty* file, then add the device mapping to your container instructions:

  Docker CLI

  Docker Compose

  docker run ... --device /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 ...
  

  version: '3'
  services:
    homeassistant:
      ...
      devices:
        - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0
  

  Optimizations

  The Home Assistant Container is using an alternative memory allocation library jemalloc for better memory management and Python runtime speedup.

  As jemalloc can cause issues on certain hardware, it can be disabled by passing the environment variable DISABLE_JEMALLOC with any value, for example:

  Docker CLI

  Docker Compose

  docker run ... -e "DISABLE_JEMALLOC=true" ...
  

  version: '3'
  services:
    homeassistant:
    ...
    environment:
      - DISABLE_JEMALLOC: true
  

  The error message <jemalloc>: Unsupported system page size is one known indicator.

  Install Home Assistant Core

  This is an advanced installation process, and some steps might differ on your system. Considering the nature of this installation type, we assume you can handle subtle differences between this document and the system configuration you are using. When in doubt, please consider one of the other installation methods, as they might be a better fit instead.

  Prerequisites

  This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and have installed Python 3.9 (including the package python3-dev) or newer.

  Install dependencies

  Before you start, make sure your system is fully updated, all packages in this guide are installed with apt, if your OS does not have that, look for alternatives.

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get upgrade -y
  

  Install the dependencies:

  sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip libffi-dev libssl-dev libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf build-essential libopenjp2-7 libtiff5 libturbojpeg0-dev tzdata
  

  The above-listed dependencies might differ or missing, depending on your system or personal use of Home Assistant.

  Create an account

  Add an account for Home Assistant Core called homeassistant. Since this account is only for running Home Assistant Core the extra arguments of -rm is added to create a system account and create a home directory. The arguments -G dialout,gpio,i2c adds the user to the dialout, gpio and the i2c group. The first is required for using Z-Wave and Zigbee controllers, while the second is required to communicate with GPIO.

  sudo useradd -rm homeassistant -G dialout,gpio,i2c
  

  Create the virtual environment

  First we will create a directory for the installation of Home Assistant Core and change the owner to the homeassistant account.

  sudo mkdir /srv/homeassistant
  sudo chown homeassistant:homeassistant /srv/homeassistant
  

  Next up is to create and change to a virtual environment for Home Assistant Core. This will be done as the homeassistant account.

  sudo -u homeassistant -H -s
  cd /srv/homeassistant
  python3 -m venv .
  source bin/activate
  

  Once you have activated the virtual environment (notice the prompt change to (homeassistant) [email protected]:/srv/homeassistant $) you will need to run the following command to install a required Python package.

  python3 -m pip install wheel
  

  Once you have installed the required Python package, it is now time to install Home Assistant Core!

  pip3 install homeassistant
  

  Start Home Assistant Core for the first time. This will complete the installation for you, automatically creating the .homeassistant configuration directory in the /home/homeassistant directory, and installing any basic dependencies.

  hass
  

  You can now reach your installation via the web interface on http://homeassistant.local:8123.

  If this address doesn’t work you may also try http://localhost:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your machines’ IP address).

  When you run the hass command for the first time, it will download, install and cache the necessary libraries/dependencies. This procedure may take anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes. During that time, you may get “site cannot be reached” error when accessing the web interface. This will only happen for the first time, and subsequent restarts will be much faster.

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