HA on an Unraid VM, can get to CLI but not WebUI, help!

v91 · June 6, 2025, 2:03am

Total newbie to Home Assistant, I used SpaceInvader One’s Docker plugin for Unraid called ‘HomeAssistant_inabox’, which creates a Home Assistant VM on your Unraid server for you. Installation went smooth, no issues. I can open the command line interface to the Home Assistant VM without issue.

But when I go to try and get to the web UI from another computer on the same home network, it just doesn’t connect.

The IP Address shown in the CLI is 192.168.122.34/24
The IP Address of my Unraid box on the network is 192.168.50.150
I’ve tried:
192.168.122.34:8123
192.168.122.34:4357
192.168.50.150:8123
192.168.50.150:8123
http://homeassistant.local:8123
http://homeassistant.local:4357

All just won’t load anything at all.
I also tried setting up port forwarding on my ASUS router to forward port 8123 to each of the above IP addresses (one at a time). Just can’t seem to connect no matter what I try. Anyone have any other ideas? Do I need to run/setup something from the CLI to get the WebUI running?

Thanks!

PS - I’ve rebooted the Docker, the VM, the Unraid server, my router, and my computer, no dice.
I also have Jellyfin running on the same Unraid server, and every device in the house can connect to it without issue, no port forwarding needed.

stevemann · June 6, 2025, 3:20am

First welcome to the forums. Here you will find a vast array of similar users.
But in five years on Home Assistant, I have to say you have hit me with the triple whammy.
I have never used Docker, Unraid or VMs.

When you reboot the host, I’ll assume that you have a monitor, do you see this screen?

The IP address you want is the first one under “System Information”. In my case: HTTP://192.168.1.57:8123 If it is blank than your Supervisor has not started.
Can we assume you are not trying to use WiFi?

From the CLI, try ha supervisor reload then restart Home Assistant.

When it comes to Docker and VM, I know nothing. But isn’t a VM in Docker a bit redundant?
I know that some have installed Home Assistant on Docker, but your add-on’s have to be in their own Docker containers.
Others have run Home Assistant in a VM in their host computer.
Myself, I run HAOS Bare-Metal on an Intel NUC i3 computer. That’s all it is, a micro PC dedicated to Home Assistant- nothing else.

It might help others who want to contribute to this thread what is your host computer, and what is your technical skill level with Docker and VM’s.

v91 · June 6, 2025, 11:22pm

Hey there, thanks for the reply!
Here is a screenshot of the HA CLI on my machine:

It’s not a VM inside of a docker, it’s a docker that creates a VM for you. So it’s just a VM. The server is hard-wired to my wireless router, and I am trying to connect to the HA Web UI through other wireless devices on the same wireless network. So…I’m not sure if that means that I’m using WiFi in the context you are asking or not, sorry.

The intention is to just run HA from my Unraid server since it’s the only machine on our network that is both always on and hard wired to the router. And then I don’t need to go buy dedicated hardware for HA, since the server should have ample headroom to run HA.

My knowledge and skill level with Docker and VMs is both very low, I was just hoping that this would be a really simple and straigh-forward process since in his video on it, it was literally just two clicks and you’re at the HA Web UI. Sadly, that has not been my experience so far.

stevemann · June 7, 2025, 3:27am

You likely have more experience with Docker than I, but where does docker create the VM? Is the VM in another Docker container? That just sounds too weird for me to grasp.

That’s fine. I wanted to make sure you weren’t connecting the Home Assistant host computer by WiFi.

Have you tried connecting to Home Assistant using:
http://192.168.122.34:8123

Does your router and PC’s IP start with 192.168.122.X ?
If not, there’s likely your problem.

I run HAOS on bare metal. I do not need the complications of managing containers or VMs. I don’t need the headaches of troubleshooting because they don’t work. I don’t have the time for the learning curve of containers or VM’s. I just want Home Assistant to work.

I run Home Assistant bare-metal on an Intel NUC i3 that I bought used on eBay for less than the cost of a new Raspberry Pi5. It’s been running for years with few issues, and the ones I had were caused by me screwing up.

Flash the HAOS image to the boot drive.
Reboot.
That’s it. Done. No learning curve for Proxmox, Docker, VM’s. No USB or Network issue. No managing disk or memory allocations.

The downside of bare metal? Your Home Assistant host computer is just that. Dedicated to one task. It just works.

If power consumption is your main driver, my NUC uses less power than the light in your refrigerator.

francisp · June 7, 2025, 4:19am

on that screen, try

ha supervisor repair
ha core rebuild

EBME2 · June 7, 2025, 9:04am

Not familiar with Unraid but have you got your VM set with a br0 docs seem to suggest it picks a virtual isolated virbr by default.

Clayin · August 16, 2025, 10:06pm

Blockquote
The IP Address shown in the CLI is 192.168.122.34/24
The IP Address of my Unraid box on the network is 192.168.50.150

/24 means that the first 3 octets define your subnet. Since the first 3 octets of those 2 addresses are not the same, it means they are not in the “same” network. This indicates that your Unraid network interface probably did not have bridging enabled when you ran the setup container.

Enabling bridging on a network interface will allow Docker and VMs to access that physical interface directly. If bridging is not enabled, then the VM will make up a random network on a “virtual bridge” (virbr0) that won’t have direct access to your home network. Unraid will try to setup NAT internally to pass traffic around, but I have personally not found that to ever work out of the box for me.

If this is the case for you, here’s how to fix it…
First, you have to turn off Docker & VM services in Unraid (via settings page). Once these are disabled, you will be able to edit your network interfaces (also via settings page).
Find your active network interface (probably eth0, but it should be the one that is actually wired to your network) and make sure “Enable bridging” is set to “Yes”. Another dropdown will appear called “Bridging members of br0”. By default, the interface you are editing will be selected. That should be enough.

Save the interface changes.
Enable Docker service.
Go back to VM Manager and look for the “Default network source” setting, it should now say “br0”. If it doesn’t, you should be able to select “br0” from the dropdown.

Reenable VMs and save your settings.

Go back to VMs page. With the HA VM stopped, click the VM Icon then Edit.
Scroll down to “Network Source” and select “br0” from the dropdown. Then save settings and start your VM.

**Alternatively, since you have SpaceInvader’s container, you could also just recreate the VM. Click on the VM icon and select “Remove VM” (not the option that removes the disks). Go back to Docker and restart the HA Container. The container will reinstall your VM using the existing disks (should only take a minute or so).

You can watch the logs or just wait and refresh the VM page but once it is up and running, the “IP ADDRESS” column should show 3 addresses. The top address should now be in the same subnet as your home network (ie: 192.168.50.x).

Go back to Docker and try the WebUI link again, and it should work.