Install HA on old laptop without UEFI

jscongdon · January 10, 2024, 5:19pm

This worked like a dream. There appears to be one issue, though. On OS update, it appears that the EFI/BOOT/grub.cfg is overwritten.
My BOOT_ORDER was set to B A. I applied this fix, and it worked, booting to Slot B. After an OS update, it started booting to Slot A. I thought that everything was working as it should. Then, in the next update, it kept booting to Slot A. I inspected the EFI/BOOT/grub.cfg and the updates were gone.

anon90600946 · February 11, 2024, 4:34pm

Yeah, that’s because the image contains the grub.cfg file. So it will overwrite it each update. To avoid this you can point your grub to use a different file like “grub_custom.cfg”. Of course copy the grub.cfg contents there and modify them. I am using this and it works. The downside is that if anything changes in the grub.cfg your custom one will not reflect that, but it shouldn’t change too much anyway.

jscongdon · February 15, 2024, 3:03pm

Makes sense.
My understanding of Grub isn’t extensive, but looking at the config, I’m unsure why manually specifying the env locations works. They’re not in “custom” locations.
Since we are pointing boot/grub/grub.cfg to the efi grub.cfg… is the load/save_env looking at the env in /boot/grub? If so, why isn’t that being updated accordingly?

As I’m thinking about it. I manually edited the /boot/grub/ env files and the changes were not recognized. So it’s almost like the env isn’t loaded unless directly pointed to. And since it doesn’t load it… it will always use the default BOOT_ORDER of A B

zombies.aaargh · April 3, 2024, 8:33am

I take it that it’s not possible to do this from within HA using the terminal interface?

I’m trying to do this remotely and have limited tools and even more limited knowledge of how to use these tools.

kadirbekil · May 12, 2024, 9:03am

hello. we don’t have that much technical knowledge. can you please explain in a video?

NathanCu · May 12, 2024, 3:03pm

Just a friendly suggestion that may help you in the future… It is generally considered bad form to respond to a post that is older than a year old (essentially resurrecting a post) without something specific to add to the subject at large (asking for a video doesn’t add) and you’ve basically just asked someone to do research for you. Those two things generally dont attract responses.

Instead, you’ll get better responses if you try to do it yourself - and then if you run into issues open a new thread, explain as much as you can about your condition and see if someone can help.

casperj · May 24, 2024, 3:42pm

@ dbrand666

You just saved an old laptop. And youve saved me TONS of money. Thanks so much for taking the time to help the community writing this post!!

acuplush · September 26, 2024, 8:20pm

grazie!! guida perfetta

mauricecyril · October 2, 2024, 2:01pm

I just tried this on an IBM / Lenovo Thinkcentre M92P SFF i5-3550 deskop PC and it worked. Thank you @carloshurtadom

Looks like some Lenovo and IBM machines always look for a windows installation and if it doesn’t detect one it always gives Error 1962, see https://gist.github.com/vees/b3fb1e5b62da155a006831c16eaac8e8

Error 1962: No Operating System Found

So the only way to get Home Assistant OS to work is to install grub on the boot partition of the drive (in my case the SSD drive that I had flashed the HAOS image to using another PC using an SSD to USB adaptor and then physically installing the flashed SSD to the Thinkcentre M92P PC).

In the BIOS you’ll also have to configure the startup options with CSM (Compatibility Support Module) enabled and with “Legacy” boot mode (Ie. Non-UEFI). In the Devices / ATA Drive Setup section of the BIOS also made sure that “Configure SATA as” was set to “IDE” and “Native Mode Operation” was set to “Enabled”.

I used a Live USB version of Parrot OS Home and had pre-flashed Home Assistant OS image to an SSD drive. So booted up the PC with the Parrot OS Live USB, opened up the terminal and followed the instructions by @carloshurtadom:

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
!

Note you can also create the grub.cfg file using nano:

sudo nano /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg

and input the following text in the cfg file:

set root=(hd0,gpt1)
configfile (hd0,gpt1)/efi/boot/grub.cfg

then CTRL-X to save and exit.

Unmount sda1

sudo umount /dev/sda1

Closed the terminal

exit

Shutdown pc, removed Live boot usb and then booted up into the HAOS setup.

blackbeard · October 27, 2024, 12:16pm

A huge thanks to you! It works perfectly on a Toshiba Satellite A200 which does not have UEFI in the bios (@carloshurtadom)

Olscraft · November 21, 2024, 7:30pm

THX!)
works for lenovo thinkcentre e73

tonejay62 · December 1, 2024, 11:25am

Hi, i’m triying to install HAOS in a old MSI CUBI B120. I’ve followed instruction and finally get grub at boot but i can’t lauch HAOS … with slot A i get error : cannot load image.
and with slot B error : unknown file system

Can you help me please ?

CZAK_Games · December 4, 2024, 1:56pm

any one can help ?

mauricecyril · December 5, 2024, 1:25am

argief:

nd named depends on the architecture and bootloader version being used. The boot config in step 8 is pretty straight forward. There is an “A” and a “B” option, and then 2 “recovery” versions of same. The trick was in selecting the right drive and partition for the kernel (bzImage) and then identifying the root partition correctly so the kernel can handover to the OS. What worked in the end was to reboot, then hit “c” for command line when the GRUB menu came up. There I could run “ls” to see how my drives are being labelled. I had to change (HD0, GPT1) to (AHCI0,msdos7). The “root=” is defined by UUID (unique hardware reference to the partition) but this gave me a “Waiting on root” message and hanged for hours even after updating the UUID to the one matching the new partition. I replaced it with “root=/dev/hda7” (7th partiti

Hi @jscongdon was wonding if you were able to find a solution to this issue. I’m getting a similar issue with the boot slots and HAOS booting to the older OS version in Boot Slot A instead of the updated version 14 in Boot Slot B.

Similar issue:

jscongdon · December 5, 2024, 4:18am

I have not found a permanent solution for this. I end up just manually booting to the proper slot. The machine rarely loses power so it hasn’t been an issue if have to manually select it again.

mauricecyril · December 15, 2024, 2:00pm

This soulution from Patrice3122 worked: Cannot upgrade from 12.4 · Issue #3566 · home-assistant/operating-system · GitHub

1. Downgrade Slot B: On the localhost, I first downgraded Slot B 
to an earlier version using the command: ha os update --version 13.1.
NB: Any attempt to update directly to version 13.2 returned 
the message: Version already installed.

2. Manual Boot Selection: During the startup process, I manually selected 
Slot B from the boot menu. Note that the boot menu appears briefly during startup. 
To select Slot B, you must press the down arrow key, and once highlighted, 
press the Enter key to confirm.

3. Update Slot A: With the system booted from Slot B, I ran the CLI 
command: ha os update --version 14.0. Since the system was 
running on Slot B, the update process applied to Slot A.

4. Final Verification: After a host reboot, Home Assistant OS 14.0 
was successfully running, booted from Slot A.

I needed to plug in a monitor to change the boot to Slot B

CZAK_Games · January 20, 2025, 7:05pm

any Solution for old PC without UEFI. ?