Install Home Assistant OS with KVM on Ubuntu headless (CLI only)

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Where to start?

I did all the same mistakes you guys did! Well, actually one mistake and one not knowing better. I’ll show you in a minute!

First of all! The 5.9 image obviously comes as qcow2.xz <- Please note the *.xz at the end! You have to unzip that with:

xz -d -v hassos_ova-5.9.qcow2.xz

If you do that your file will grow to a 32Gb qcow2 file.

After this, redo all your vm creation process, you’ll notice that now you really boot to home assistant.

What you show as console is in fact the UEFI console of QEMU/KVM. It has nothing to do with home assistant at all. That was my first mistake! I hope this helps.

Now on to our second problem:
No IP even though the bridge is up. I am using an Ubuntu Server 20.10 install an have Docker as well as QEMU/KVM installed. I did setup the bridge like explained before but: it seems Ubuntu likes to restrict things without my knowledge, hence:

Howto - disable netfilter

You need to disable the netfilter on your bridge or nothing will go in or out, even if everything looks absolutely fine.

In short what I did was: (in simple steps and assuming you already created your bridge as shown above with netplan).

-> Important <-
You first need to follow the tutorial/how-to above!
Create your bridge and then, when your traffic goes in + out of your host without any problem move on to the next problem.

-> Even more important! <-
This has been tested with Ubuntu Server 20.10, I can not guarantee it to work on any other Distro / Version!

-> !!!Absolutely, incredibly important!!! <-
Understand that you will be messing with udev, startup rules and such. If your server starts screaming at your wife and kids I will not be held responsible! If you do not have
!!! physical !!!
access to your server don’t do it! You could end up with a networkless machine!

-> Lets get it on <-

  1. Make sure your brigdge is in place and works so far!

  2. Create a file called /etc/sysctl.d/bridge.conf and fill it in with this:

net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables=0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables=0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables=0
  1. Then create a file called /etc/udev/rules.d/99-bridge.rules
    Just one line needed inside, not more, not less:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="module", KERNEL=="br_netfilter", RUN+="/sbin/sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/bridge.conf"
  1. [Optional] Disable and remove the default virtual network for QEMU, use sudo if you get a permission denied error:
virsh net-destroy default
virsh net-undefine default
  1. Cross your fingers and reboot your server!

Of course all credits for my guide go to the author of the forementioned article. I’m just summing it up here.

I hope this helps you in any way!

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