Installation Debian 11 Docker Supervisor - deleting existing docker settings

Hello!

My setup: Debian 11, OMV 6, Docker, Portainer, AMD64.

I already have docker and several container doing things on my NAS.

I use a custom storage location for my docker, so it is not my OS drive on my nas, but the replicated storage area.

When I follow this guide, it seems to reinstall docker & portainer and remove all my containers and stop them. They simply disappear. If I reverse all the steps and uninstall portainer and docker, then reinstall I get them all back right where I left off.

When I follow these steps the create user page starts, so I am assuming that the installation worked perfectly.

I think in the deb package it might be specifying the docker storage location and it is changing it. Does anyone know about this? This is a new NAS and a new install, and driving me crazy.

Cheers
S

I’m pretty sure I just responded to you in another thread but what you’re doing isn’t supported. In a supervised install docker is completely managed by supervisor. Running a container alongside home assistant which isn’t an addon, plugin or some other container supervisor manages isn’t supported. If you want to do things like use portainer and other non-addon containers then you should use a container install not supervised.

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your response - I appreciate it. I did not see that proviso anywhere, I guess I did not read the docs well enough.

I had a previous install (maybe a script by kanga) which accomplished this. It seemed to work perfectly, but this was before the HA supported Supervisor in Docker.

I am not sure the goals of the Home Assistant team, but it seems not very forward looking. If I have a reliable NAS, with good hardware etc, it is the perfect box to run HA on. However if I can not use docker for anything else, then it really diminishes my NAS capability…

The reason I was looking for supervisor is that when I previously installed HA, the first integration said it needed MQTT, and I either have to start running all these services or just click a button and it is done.

Surely the roadmap should make it as simple install as possible to start up with little or no technical ability. To me that would be a docker compose script ready to copy and paste) that just loads everything, and when you need an MQTT broker (for example), it just spins it up somehow. I am fairly technical, but I would prefer to spend my problem solving passion on turning my lights on and off rather than how docker and low level OS things are working.

I will see if I can do it another way, thanks for your help - this was not directed at you, just random ramblings.

I get it, I know what you mean. I’m perfectly capable of spinning up docker containers myself as well but supervisor does make a lot of things easier.

The problem is that the way it is able to make things easier is by exerting a lot of control over the host machine and docker. When things change outside of it’s control it can mess things up that aren’t necessarily obvious. Portainer in particular was a source of a lot of hard to fix issues, that’s why it was removed from the community addons repo a while ago. That’s also why this was written to really spell out what the HA team can support with this installation method. Particularly relevant is this section.

That being said, it’s not impossible to use this installation method here. The requirement here is just that you have to use supervisor to manage what containers run when and with what settings as opposed to something like docker compose or portainer.

So to start, for all the containers you use that aren’t addons have you tried searching the forum here to see if a user has made it into an addon? Addon config essentially consists of two parts:

  1. how to build the image
  2. how to run a container from the image

#1 can also be replaced by simply linking to an existing image in the addon config (see the image field at my link). As a result many image can be made into an addon with very few steps. Some require more work then others but it’s generally always possible. And for popular software it’s likely someone in this community has done that work for you already.

You also don’t need to go to all the work of creating a repo and publishing images if you don’t want to. You can simply put all the config in a folder in /addons and then install and run your addon from there.

I realize this may not have been the answer you were hoping to here as it seems like you already know docker and docker compose and this is a new system. And there are definitely things ha could do to make this easier (feedback and/or PRs are welcome!) But doing it this way allows HA to make a managed system that is easy for both users and maintainers.

And like I said it does also maintain an advanced path. For users who know docker and have advanced needs beyond what addons can do there is a container install option. Which is fully maintained and supported as well.

Or if you really are dead set against a Container install then you could always install HA OS in a VM on your NAS.

That will get you a supervisor and still allow you to use other stuff on the NAS.