HomeAssistant VM freezes on a MacOS UTM VM

sb330xi · February 1, 2025, 3:47pm

Have a new M4 mac mini. Did a fresh install of current UTM, setup a HomeAssistant VM, everything is working perfectly fine.
In the MacOS i disabled everything that is power management connected: no sleeps, no disconnections, nothing.
When I disconnect from the server for an hour or more - the VM freezes, HA stops working etc. I have to login back to the server and restart the VM.
Any suggestions please how to stop this freeze?

fleskefjes · February 1, 2025, 4:01pm

Anything in the logs?

sb330xi · February 1, 2025, 4:06pm

HomeAssistant logs are empty. And I don’t know how to check UTM logs.

fleskefjes · February 1, 2025, 4:09pm

Sounds like an UTM issue, not Home Assistant in my opinion (but I could be wrong). Do some digging here https://docs.getutm.app/

sb330xi · February 1, 2025, 5:50pm

the only useful tip there was to check the “Prevent system from sleeping” option of UTM. I already had that checked. I’m googling more, people say the use “caffeinate” and/or “amphetamine” app for this purposes. I’m not a linix speciast, but I guess there must be a way to run one of these apps on the HA linux? any idea how?

here’s a link to github with instructions:

github.com/utmapp/UTM

Prevent Sleep When VM is Running

opened 08:53PM - 23 Jan 23 UTC

closed 05:59AM - 06 Mar 23 UTC

peterstory

enhancement

When running a service within a VM, disabling sleep on the host may be desirable…. This could be a per-VM setting, where UTM would set a sleep assertion when the VM is running. For example, see the `caffeinate` utility: ``` CAFFEINATE(8) System Manager's Manual CAFFEINATE(8) NAME caffeinate – prevent the system from sleeping on behalf of a utility SYNOPSIS caffeinate [-disu] [-t timeout] [-w pid] [utility arguments...] DESCRIPTION caffeinate creates assertions to alter system sleep behavior. If no assertion flags are specified, caffeinate creates an assertion to prevent idle sleep. If a utility is specified, caffeinate creates the assertions on the utility's behalf, and those assertions will persist for the duration of the utility's execution. Otherwise, caffeinate creates the assertions directly, and those assertions will persist until caffeinate exits. Available options: -d Create an assertion to prevent the display from sleeping. -i Create an assertion to prevent the system from idle sleeping. -m Create an assertion to prevent the disk from idle sleeping. -s Create an assertion to prevent the system from sleeping. This assertion is valid only when system is running on AC power. ... ```

sb330xi · February 2, 2025, 4:40am

After spending quite a few hours on this topic, I ended up installing a VMWare VM on my mac M4, and I moved the whole HA install over there. VMWare seems to work properly and does not freeze.
I guess my problem is resolved.