Home Assistant Operating System

In this chapter, we are going to install the Home Assistant Operating System which is a Linux-based system managed by Home Assistant. It comes with a Supervisor pre-installed to manage Add-ons, the Home Assistant Core, and the entire underlying Linux system through a browser window. Home Assistant OS can be installed on a wide range of devices (Raspberry Pi, Odroid, Linux, Windows, macOS, VirtualBox, VMware..etc), check out https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/ for a complete list of supported devices.

We are going to set up Home Assistant OS as a virtual machine, running on top of a host operating system.

Table of contents

Hypervisor Operating System

VirtualBox

Virtual Machine setup

QNAP NAS - Virtualization Station

Hypervisor Operating System

When re-using an old laptop to host Home Assistant OS it is best to start out with a clean, fresh operating system. I recommend using Linux Mint - Cinnamon for its low system requirements, user-friendly interface, and built-in Software-manager.

You will need a 4GB USB drive to install Linux Mint. Content on the USB drive and the laptop will be erased during the installation process!

Install VirtualBox from the Terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install Virtualbox

sudo apt-get install virtualbox—ext–pack

Download the Home Assistant VirtualBox (.vdi) image, extract it under $Home/VirtualBoxVMs

sudo apt install xz-utilscd $HOME/Downloadsxz --decompress hassos_ova-5.13.vdi.xzmkdir $HOME/VirtualBoxVMsmv $HOME/Downloads/hassos_ova-5.13.vdi $HOME/VirtualBoxVMs

VirtualBox

Running Home Assistant OS on a virtual machine hides the actual hardware configuration of the server hosting it. This allows running the same Home Assistance OS image under a wide range of devices without the need to make any changes within the Home Assistance OS. The always-on physical server (Hypervisor) running VirtualBox can be an old laptop/desktop with at least 4GB RAM, 60GB storage space. and a dual-core CPU running Linux, Windows, or OSX. Great low-budget option.

Download the latest VirtualBox platform package and follow the installation steps for your platform.

Virtual Machine setup

Download the compressed VirtualBox (.vdi) image of Home Assistant OS and extract the vdi file inside it to a folder called VirtualBoxVMs

Start VirtualBox and create a new Virtual Machine: Press the Expert mode button

Type: Linux
Version: Other Linux (64-bit)
Memory: 2024 MB (minimum recommended)
Hard disk: Use an existing virtual hard disk file and select the vdi file under VirtualBoxVMs folder

After clicking the Create button the Virtual Machine is created. Before starting it go to the Settings and change the following:

Boot order: Disable everything except Hard Disk
Enable EFI (special OSes only): Enable this, else you will get a "No bootable medium found! System halted" error when starting the VM

Increase the Processor count to 2 CPUs (minimum recommended)

Change the network adapter to Bridged Adapter, and select the local network adapter that has internet access. In bridged mode, the VM will get a new network interface with its own IP address.

Reserve a DHCP IP: Find the virtual machine's network card MAC address is under the VirtualBox VM Settings - Network - Advanced option and create a DHCP reservation in your router:

After saving the settings Start the virtual machine:

After installing Home Assistance OS, create an IP reservation for it on the router, and proceed to install the Add-ons needed for the project.

QNAP NAS - Virtualization Station

Installation steps of Home Assistant OS on a QNAP NAS. Requires a QNAP NAS with at least 4GB RAM and a processor with Intel VT-X support.

First, create a Shared Folder on the NAS for storing the Virtual Machine image:

Download the latest Vmware Workstation (.vmdk) image of Home Assistant Operating System , extract VMDK file from the XZ archive and upload it to the new QNAP share. Next create a folder called HomeAssistant under the VMs share.

Open Virtualization Station 3 and select Import / Image Converter. Load the VMDK file from the VMs share and set the converted image location to the VMs/HomeAssistant folder.

Once the conversion is ready click the Create button in Virtualization Station 3 and use the following VM configuration:

VM name: Home Assistant
Boot firmware: UEFI
CPU cores: 2
Memory: 2 GB
HDD Location: Use existing image - Select the IMG file generated under the VMs/HomeAssistant share
Network: Connected to a Virtual Switch with internet access

Once the VM is created click the Settings icon and make the following changes under the Settings tab:

Storage - Chache Mode: Writeback

Others - Auto Start: Retain previous status

Network - MAC address: Copy the MAC address of the virtual machine's network card and create a DHCP reservation in your router.

Now turn on the VM from the Overview tab in Virtualization Station 3. Once the VM started up you should see a login prompt, login with the username root with a blank password.

After installing Home Assistance OS, create an IP reservation for it on the router, and proceed to install the Add-ons needed for the project.

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Home Assistant Operating System

Hypervisor Operating System

VirtualBox

Virtual Machine setup

QNAP NAS - Virtualization Station

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