Does anyone have HA set up and running successfully on DietPi? I have tried installing HA and OZW following the instructions for installation in a virtualenv and while HA starts, I am apparently hitting snags with OZW.
The All-In-One installer does not work on DietPi so I cannot go that route.
It is getting close to time to just buying a hub and calling it good. I love HA, but I don’t want to spend hours upon hours trying to figure out configurations. I like the desktop interface of Mate with DietPi and the ability to just select the software I want installed and let it run. It’s just easier to work within when I need to use the desktop side.
Anyway, if anyone has some insight on how to make HA work on DietPi I would greatly appreciate it.
Sorry to say but I think you have put yourself in a pretty big hole. A quick look at DietPi shows it to be about a third the size of even jessie lite. I have just downloaded it to have a look. I don’t know what they left off and how they trimmed the size, but I would guess that there are many dependencies missing and perhaps even substitutions. Even if you do\id get this working, you would be on your own with updates and changes. I am usually a big fan of less, but I would strongly suggest that you go a proven route and use full Jessie if you absolutely need a desktop.
Pick your battles. If your idea is to work at building a platform to install HA then, by all means, work at it. If your goal is to get involved with home automation, then don’t waste time. Home-Assistant and OpenZwave are both constantly changing. Having a less understood platform may cause you headaches down the road. I have been a full time Linux user for almost 25 years and there are times when it just doesn’t make sense to strike out on your own.
Oh, yeah, I hear ya. I was just all hopeful I would be able to use DietPi with HA as I find the DietPi much easier to set up and customize than the stock raspian image. But, I’m sure that easier set up and customization comes with a price in some form or fashion.
I wish I was a little more skilled in digging around in the log files I could try and figure out why HA wont start.
Once installed, you really shouldn’t need much direct access to the Pi. Set up SAMBA so that you can remotely edit your configuration files from your platform of choice. I think there is a video for setting it up. I will see if I can find it. If you really have a great desire to set up DietPi, then set aside your SD card. Get a new card; install jessie; use the All in One Installer; get yourself set up and running. Once you are comfortable, then decide if you want to go back to DietPi and try again.
I hear ya. I am now set up on Jessie. It’s just an awful desktop to be in. I don’t generally mess around with the desktop but I like to get in there and tinker around from time to time.
I do have Samb set up now and everything back to what it was before I tried DietPi. I am certainly going to have to invest in some more SD cards so I can experiment and play around a bit more without having to worry about messing up a working config.
Now, if I may as a question that is a bit off topic since Samba was brought up to access the config files. Is there a way to change the location of the config files? I want to move them out of the hidden directory of .homeassistant to a non-hidden folder. Is that possible and if so, how?
You can always make an image copy of an SD card and restore it again at a later time.
Copy configuration.yaml before making any changes. Make copies of the .homeassistant directories, so that you can restore them if you break something. i just did a complete OS reinstall and was back up and running immediately by restoring that one directory.
I would seriously consider getting to understand working from the command line and ditch the desktop. For HA there isn’t much to do other than that one directory. If you want to understand Linux in general, use a virtual machine and practice there.
For hidden directories, you can usually change preferences in the file manager app to show hidden. That does expose you to inadvertently modifying things that shouldn’t be touched. You could modify the home-assistant.service file to change the location but that might be changed with an update. The .service file is located in /etc/systemd but be careful.
Thank you @zarthan. I made a change in the Samba config to point directly to the HA configuration folder, so I don’t have to worry about the viewing of hidden things on the Windows side.
I ended up using a 32Gb USB stick as my Samba drive and will do as you mentioned and back up to there for the HA config directory. I think I will try setting up rsync to take care of that for me.
I am getting better at working from the command line, in fact, I own the Raspberry Pi much in that regard as it has forced me in a way to get more comfortable moving around the system from the command line. I have much to learn, but I suppose, over time it will get better.
It might also be worth taking a look at minibian (https://minibianpi.wordpress.com/) minimal base install but with the same repo as raspbian, so everything is installable. I’m using it for my HA, disliked all the packages that the standard raspbian image contains.
I set it all up manually, not sure the aio existed when i set it up (or i didn’t spot it). I see no reason why the aio wouldn’t work on minibian though.