Install HA on old laptop without UEFI

[trevormcclellan]

Yeah, Debian Live should work, or any Live OS. I just used Ubuntu because I already had it on a flash drive. I’ll combine the instructions from others above that I used.

@carloshurtadom

Using Debian 11 Live I installed HAOS @ Terminal:

Logged in as root user

sudo su -

Downloaded and installed Home Assistant

curl -L https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/9.4/haos_generic-x86-64-9.4.img.xz |xz -d >/dev/sda

Mounted sda1

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Installed grub2

• sudo apt install grub2
• sudo grub-install --compress=xz --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda --force

Configured the grub.cfg file

• cat <<! | sudo dd of=/mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg
• set root=(hd0,gpt1)
• configfile (hd0,gpt1)/efi/boot/grub.cfg
• !

Edit the grub.cfg file

• vi mnt/efi/boot/grub.cfg (open in editor of your choice)
• change load env to load_env --file (hd0,gpt1)/efi/boot/grubenv
• change save_env A_TRY A_OK B_TRY B_OK ORDER MACHINE_ID to save_env --file (hd0,gpt1)/efi/boot/grubenv A_TRY A_OK B_TRY B_OK ORDER MACHINE_ID
• save and quit

@carloshurtadom

Unmount sda1

• sudo umount /dev/sda1
• exit

Closed Terminal, shutdown pc, removed Debian 11 Live boot usb and restarted x86-64-bit system with a non-UEFI Legacy BIOS.