HA OS installation fails on UEFI in qemu-kvm

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

Doing a new install to libvirt (qemu-kvm x86_64) on headless Ubuntu Server 22.04 as described here Linux - Home Assistant

And it ends up in UEFI shell. In BIOS, Secure Boot is Disabled (and cannot be enabled). I have no previous HAOS image from which I could restore EFI partition (like other users suggested on UEFI issues after update of existing HAOS).

This is the autoselected platform stuff by virt-manager GUI (“Generic or Unknown OS: Usage not recommended”):

 <os>
    <type arch="x86_64" machine="pc-i440fx-jammy">hvm</type>
    <loader readonly="yes" type="pflash">/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE_4M.fd</loader>
    <nvram>/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/ha36_VARS.fd</nvram>
    <boot dev="hd"/>
  </os>

I have tried multiple times other platform variants (Linux 2018, BIOS, various UEFI loaders…) but no go.

Any idea?

2

Since I’m on Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop, the setup options may differ. For the OS, I picked Generic default. For the Customization UEFI x86_64:… - I seem to recall I just had one option.

Anyway, here is the resulting XML file:

  <os>
    <type arch="x86_64" machine="pc-i440fx-focal">hvm</type>
    <loader readonly="yes" type="pflash">/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.fd</loader>
    <nvram>/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/hassio_VARS.fd</nvram>
    <boot dev="hd"/>
  </os>
3

Eh, call me stupid - I was not aware that qemu cannot handle compressed xz files on the fly.
I had to decompress the downloaded qcow2.xz image first. Too much time spent with Arch Linux’ xz packages :slight_smile:

Lesson learned:

  • virt-manager shows any file as available storage.
  • the Home Assistant installation guide should mention that the downloaded file must be manually uncompressed.
2 Likes