I need help installing Home Assistant on mini pc

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

Hi All

Brand new…and I have no real idea what I’m doing

I bought a mini pc to install HA on.

I bought a HP ProDesk 400 G5 mini, i5 9500t, 16gb ram, 256gb ssd

I followed all of the instructions on how to install home assistant with ubuntu

I made it through all the steps, flashed ubuntu on a drive, activated it on my mini pc, downloaded the image for HA while on ubuntu on the mini pc, and restored the disk image without issues

Everything went as per the instructions on the website.

But when the mini pc restarted it “coudn’t find bootable medium”

I repeat all of the above steps (which now seems like i have multiple copies of HAOS on the SSD), and it failed again with the same message.

I tried the command prompt in ubuntu next, “efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/ --part 1 --label “HAOS”
–loader ‘\EFI\BOOT\bootx64.efi’”

and that failed as well

I then tried to Method 2 of installing HAOS by flashing the boot medium on a usb key…and this also failed and said unable to find boot medium.

Please help me!! I’m not great with computers, so I’m completely lost and I don’t know how to fix this.

Thanks!

2

Presumably you changed the computer’s BIOS to boot from Ubuntu on a USB stick? Did you change it back again? Sounds as if it’s still looking for the USB stick.

3

I went back and changed the boot order to the SSD. Unfortunately it still did not work and could not find the boot medium

4

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Can this be of any help: Installing HAOS on a dedicated x86-64 PC - #11 by MichaelSidenius

Even if the bootorder has changed but the SSD is still in the list, you should be fine by removing the flashdrive so the system boots from the SSD.

If you tap the ESC key or F9 right after booting, you also get the boot menu where you should be able to select a disk to boot from.
If that does not work, something went wrong in the previous step where you prepared the system.

5

Yes I changed the boot order, and also went through F9, selected the SSD directly, and still was unable to start the haos/boot it
Is there any way to do a “fresh” restart?

the SSD looks like it has multiple copies of HAOS installed on it at this point

I’m getting the error " selected boot image did not authenticate"

6

Did you make sure SecureBoot is disabled in the BIOS?
HA do not have the certificates to support SecureBoot and if SecureBoot is enabled, then it will see HA as a viable boot option.

7

That procedure creates multiple partitions on the disk.
Of course you can start over but first check that your BIOS is set right for HA to able to boot because maybe that is your problem right now.

8

yes i had secure boot and legacy boot mode disabled in bios. I had those both off at the ubuntu lauch, and then made sure they were off again in bios when the haos failed to load. Unfortunately it didn’t help

9

ok

I just deleted everything and went through the steps again.

Same result. Followed the instructions exactly

“selected boot image could not authenticate”

If offers me the option to try booting from a different source, but that fails as well.

has anyone had issues with HP mini computers not working well?

10

Confirming I successfully migrated from RPi 4B to an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 about a month ago - followed the same instructions (generic dedicated x86-64 install) with no major problems experienced.

Good luck…does sound like a BIOS setting causing your failure.

11

Check issue noted here: HAOS on hp prodesk bios problem - #8 by MushyGab

A dead BIOS battery could also contribute, but I’d expect you to get a memory corruption error as part of the boot sequence if that was the case. You can check for this by making a BIOS change, power cycling (leave off for a good 15-30 seconds) and seeting if the change is retained.

12

ok, i think i have figured out the problem, but i don’t know how to fix it.

Even though i disable secure boot and legacy mode/boot, it appears that its trying to use secure boot anyways.

on the HP BIOS there is a options to disable them both, which is what i’ve done.

is there any other way to stop secure boot from starting? I think secure boot is my issue

13

problem solved

NUM LOCK

i had to put in a 4 digit code to confirm my change to the BIOS. I used the number pad, not realizing num lock was on. I wasn’t entering the numbers. I never turned off secure boot

FIXED!

14

I guess that has to be ‘the numlock was NOT on’

Hi, good you got it solved!

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15

Hi All

One more question!

I ended up using “method 2” to install my HAOS from a USB to my mini PC.

Does that mean the USB always needs to be inserted in the mini PC now?

I.e. did the flash drive actually place the HAOS on the mini PC, or did the mini PC boot from the flash drive, and the HAOS isn’t actually on the mini pc memory?

Is there any performance downside from running the HAOS off a USB permanently?

Thanks for helping a complete amateur get this running!

16

It should not boot from the USB, but you can test that quickly. Just restart and remove it.