Cannot access homeassistant.local from local network

Configuration
1

I joined this site a while back and have visited it regularly for assistance in fixing issues. This is the first time that I actually logged in in a while and found that people replied to a question I posted. I will be going back and reviewing their replies.

I will say that this site is extremely helpful and I now realize that I should start signing in rather than just visiting and reading the forums.

I have a new problem that I just cannot figure out and it is becoming a pain. I have HA running a a Virtual Machine that does not have a keyboard or mouse attached. I access the host machine running Windows 10 through Remote Desktop.

The machine was working fine and my HA was controlling around thirty different things in my home. I started to have problems with the host machines hard drive so I replaced it with a WD 1TB Black, increased the RAM to 32GB and dedicated 16 to the Virtual Machine.

I have to say it runs awesome. The problem I have been having is I can only access the dashboard from the host machine. http://homeassistant.local:8123 and http://192.168.X.XXX:8123 work find but only on the host.

My HA app on my android phone, my other computers in my network cannot access the dashboard.

I have been fussing with this for a while and then yesterday it dawned on me. When I installed HA on the new hard drive I “restored” the instance of my HA from a previous backup. Everything worked fine until I tried to access it from a different machine.

I suspect the reason is that somewhere the HA has recorded the MAC address to the old network card. Even though I have access to the machine through the Remote Desktop, HA is looking for the old network settings. I have searched for a solution but gave up and decided to post here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

1 Like
2

Trying to resolve the issue I:

Assigned a static IP in HA.

Assigned the same static IP in my router

Neither fixed it.

3

What VM software are you using ?

4

Oracle VM VirtualBox

5

Did you set up the IP address for not only the box but the HA using virtual NIC interface?
https://blogs.oracle.com/scoter/post/oracle-vm-virtualbox-networking-options-and-how-to-manage-them

6

I read over the link you provided and think it may have lead me down the right track. Not sure.

I have a question specific to the Bridged Adapter. I want my machine to be part of the network and that is how the old machine was configured.

I read, “if your host has multiple physical NICs (e.g. Wireless and Wired) you must reconfigure the bridge when your host jumps networks.”

My question is do I need to set the host machines network card to bridged? I do not remember having to mess with it in the past but maybe I need to?

Using the host machine I have access to all of my sensors, switches, lights. The problem has got to be in the configuration between the VM and the host. The router is set up to assign a static IP to the computer it recognizes as HA. In the homeassistant Settings|Network| Configure network interfaces, I have also assigned the same static IP.

The host machine has a totally different static IP but since the VM is set to Bridged in Oracle that would seem to be correct.

Using different machines on the network I get these errors:

This site can’t be reached

homeassistant.local’s DNS address could not be found. Diagnosing the problem.

DNS_PROBE_POSSIBLE

and

This site can’t be reached

XXX.XXX.XXX.225 took too long to respond.

Try:

ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT

I tried turning the Zone Alarm firewall off thinking that it may have been the issue but it didn’t seem to solve the problem.

7

It is definitely a network problem.

.local addresses are resolved using some MQDNS magic.

.local - Wikipedia.

as such these use broadcasts that don’t always travel well through networks.

The first step is to see if you are able to resolve the host name

From the windows machine type ping homeassistant.local

Does it work, what ip address is reported?

Do the same from your android phone (find a ping app).

If they resolve to the same ip address from both devices and they is the same ip address the HASS is using, then your issue is not resolving the name to an ip address and we can move on to step 2

8

Network computer hard wired with static IP.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19042.2965]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:>ping homeassistant.local

Pinging homeassistant [fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9: time=1ms
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9: time=1ms
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9: time=1ms
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9: time=1ms

Ping statistics for fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 1ms

C:>

Android Phone

Android Ping ID results.

{Android } $Welcome!
{Android } $
{Android } $ping homeassistant.local
Starting…
ping:unknown host homeassistant.local
ping:unknown host homeassistant.local
ping:unknown host homeassistant.local
ping:unknown host homeassistant.local
ping:unknown host homeassistant.local
ping:unknown host homeassistant.local
----- homeassistant.local pin statistics -----
Packets: Sent - 6, Received - 0, Lost = 6 (100% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0.0ms, Maximum = 0.0ms, Average = 0.0ms,
Ping Stopped!

Host computer hard wired with static IP.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.3448]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:>ping homeassistant.local

Pinging homeassistant.local [fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8: time<1ms
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8: time<1ms
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8: time<1ms
Reply from fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8: time<1ms

Ping statistics for fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

C:>

Something I noticed is the machine that didn’t work had
fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%9

The machine that did work was
fe80::d9c2:1c9a:474b:b2ef%8

The fe80 addresses were not the same? Is the the MAC address of the network card?

9

try ping with a -4 at the end, that will give you the ipv4 adress. Then try connecting / pinging to that with your phone. Also check that your phone is on the same network / subnet.

10

The phone is connected to the router and may even have an assigned IP.

I tried the -4 at the end on the Network machine and got:

C:>ping homeassistant.local-4
Ping request could not find host homeassistant.local-4. Please check the name and try again.

C:>ping homeassistant.local -4
Ping request could not find host homeassistant.local. Please check the name and try again.

11

But can you ping the ipv4 directly, not using homeassistant.local? Both ping homeassistant.local and the same with -4 works here, gives ipv6 and ipv4 replies.

12

I think the problem lays with the virtual machine network configuration of that image. It looks like it only has a v6 address and no v4. What VM player are you using? How is the network card configured (screen shots please). My guess is it is setup on a local bridge network that is only routable when you are on that PC. Run “ipconfig /all” and post the output. You need to get it setup to be on the local lan and use DHCP to request an IP address from your router. Do you see it list into your routers client table?

13

I apologize, I don’t understand what you mean by “can you pin the ipv4 directly”?

Do you mean the static IP for the ipv4?

System Information
IPv4 addresses for cnp0s3: 192.168.1.225/24
IPv6 addresses for cnp0s3: fe80: :d9c2:1c9a;474b:b2ef/64
OS Version: Home Assistant OS 10.5
Home Assistant Core: 2023.9.2

Home Assistant URL: http://homeassistant.local:8123
Observer URL: http://homeassitant.local:4357

14

Yes, can you ping the ipv4-adress from “outside” (not the host machine), not using homeassistant.local but just the ip of Home Assistant. ping 192.168.1.225

15

C:>ping 192.168.1.225

Pinging 192.168.1.225 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.225:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:>

What confuses me is that everything was completely operational under the old machine when I did the backup. The only thing that changed which I am aware of is the IP address of the new VM.

I have considered trying to find the old static IP and use it to see if it fixes it but I don’t remember what it was. It appears that the problem is in the HA settings.

At one point I set up the duckDNS so I could access the HA from outside my network. It has been a long time and I believe that I had limited success but I never used it.

This is frustrating because I prefer to use the HA app on my phone to control everything. Now I have one computer that works and I have to keep going to that room to turn on/off lights.

Something else that might help identify the issue is that the HA cannot access files on my network. When I set the backup to go to a network location rather than the host machine it will not work. I also could not do the restore from the network folder. I had to put it on a thumb drive and then insert it in the host machine.

I really appreciate your assistance with this. It is frustrating and I do not want to start over from scratch. I have a lot of things connected and it would be a huge project. This has got to be something simple I am just not seeing it.

16

it looks like IP4 isn’t working on your side.

Try

ping -4 homeassistant.local

Pretty sure it will fail.

As IP6 appears to be working, it doesn’t look like it is a bridge problem (as IP6 wouldn’t work either in that case).

Is HA on DHCP or static?
If on DHCP then check the routers DHCP table if it got an IP4 (and which one)

And you could also try to check / (re-)set your local IP address from the console (which should be available on the console on your VM host),

network info
should give you an overview of the current settings.
It should mention something about
interface eth0
connected: true
ipv4:
address: 192.168.1.225/24
etc

17

OK so we narrowed it down to that your instance is not reachable from the outside. Can you check what ip (v4) your other devices have? Are they in the 192.168.1.0-254 range? Can you share the settings page of your virtual machine and also tell us how your network is set up/wired? (Router, switches).

18

Hello!!

I got a green home assistant, and I’m having exactly the same behaviour. It looks like the ip is assigned ( I connected a screen to the green home assistant, and the ip is there). I also have an Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro where I can see that the ip in the homeassistant is the same as it shows in the screen.

BUT, I can’t either ping or connect to the green home assistant. I tried pinging with homeassistant.local , but also with the ip , and I don’t get any response.

Where should I continue checking?

Thanks in advance!

19

Can you ping the router?
What is the IP of the router, server and your computer? (Just checking that they are on the same subnet).

20

So, the Ubiquiti Dream Pro subnet is 192.168.1.1 , but the internet subnet ( the one from the router that receives internet ) is 192.168.100.1.

The home assistant is 192.168.1.193 ( part of the internal network addresses )

I can’t ping any of them ( doing ping 192.168.1.1 , but idk if those routers have the ping protocol implemented )