Bring HA OS back to live on old hardware

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I have a HA OS installed on an old Raspberry Pi 2. It is far away but I have remote access to it. Haven’t touched it for a while and now when I tried to login and was going to setup some 443mhz receiver to track temperature outside I’ve found system in an update-loop state:

2026-02-04 02:34:02.751 ERROR (SyncWorker_1) [supervisor.docker.manager] image with reference Package raspberrypi2-homeassistant · GitHub was found but does not match the specified platform: wanted linux/arm/v6, actual: linux/arm/v7

OK, it makes sense, but replacing hardware is going to cost hundreds of euros and will take at least a week. So I’m looking for a way to get system back to live having just an unstable VPN connection.

So far I’ve tried:

ha supervisor options --auto-update=false

This command returns success but doesn’t seem to have any effect on my installation. Looks like it doesn’t really work on HA OS.

Next I tried to download the latest supported image version (2025.3.4), delete the 2025.8.3 image and tag 2025.3.4 as 2025.3.4.

Error from web UI goes away but HA never starts. And after reboot it just downloads the unsupported image again.

I’m a bit out of ideas at this point, is there anything else that could be done?

2

You are putting a lorry trailer onto a lawnmower engine, and expecting to fly to the moon. Yes, it could possibly be done. Would you try it?

Don’t!

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3

I expect it to do the job it did perfectly until this architecture was deprecated.

4

A new Pi costs $70.

5

Don’t forget to add vacation days to travel to another country and tickets too. Round trip is about $1000 and 4 days just for travelling. Ah yes, customs may also not appreciate Raspberry PI in my luggage.

I didn’t ask how to upgrade the system, I asked how to make it functional again.

6

OK, here’s the way:

docker pull ghcr.io/home-assistant/raspberrypi2-homeassistant:2025.3.4
docker stop homeassistant
docker rm homeassistant
docker run -d \
  --name homeassistant \
  --network host \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --security-opt seccomp=unconfined \
  --tmpfs /tmp \
  -v /mnt/data/supervisor/homeassistant:/config \
  -v /dev:/dev:ro \
  -v /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro \
  -v /run/udev:/run/udev:ro \
  -v /etc/machine-id:/etc/machine-id:ro \
  ghcr.io/home-assistant/raspberrypi2-homeassistant:2025.3.4

Won’t survive reboot and requires root ssh access but I did have it configured.

7

Nobody delivers a Raspberry Pi where you live?

Maybe buy a secondhand Intel NUC then? Those are $50 too.

8

For low-end requirements, there are also plenty of older x86_64 thin clients for 15-30 EUR/ USD. While I would aim a little higher than that, with things like esphome in mind, those will do well for basic (~RPi2 like) needs.

9

You may have to keep delving back to earlier snapshots that work with the Pi2

Sensor: Be a little more specific with what you tried here. Maybe you can actually do something here off-line on another computer compiler and just connect it and it could work, but you have been very scant with any information. Is your PI2 still running? Does it have MQTT configured? What version of HomeAssistant last was working on it? Is ESPHome running on it? What version? When did you last do a backup? Can you restore from it? What is the 433Mhz device? What added devices are going to interface with your Pi2 to enable it to talk 433Mhz?

10

Suggestions: and I TOTALLY get you may have a reason to run what you are running…

BUT if you’re gonna live on the razor’s edge…

  • DO NOT run automatic updates on a mission critical system you dont have hands on. You’re one restart away from not having hands on that system unless you have a remote management head
  • ALWAYS have a backout plan.

I see you got your software back - look into new solutions if you’re going to stay on that pi2 or look at upgrading it. HA REQUIRES a Pi4 with multi-GB of RAM now. (or other similar 64bit modern processor) If it’s ‘good enough’ - lockdown the image and turn off automatic update.

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