Installation woes of HAOS with VirtualBox

Installation
1

I tried creating a Virtualbox VM with HAOS using the provided vdi & instructions

Instructions I followed:

The machine was created successfully but I CANNOT get a successful first boot. There’s no VRDE session established or IP assigned but Virtualbox reports the machine is running. I currently have other VMs running on this system so it’s not a virtualbox configuration.

Please note that this is a headless installation on Ubuntu Server 22.04. I’m happy to migrate to 24.04 if there’s any known bugs but Ubuntu 22.04 is still supported.

$VBoxManage --version
7.0.20r163906

Please let me know if there are any logs or other info that would be of use troubleshooting this issue.

Edit #1: Here’s my installation script. I deleted everything and remade it to make sure this was completely accurate (note: I removed working directory & VRDE password for sake of privacy, they are set in the script I ran):

# Download VM image
HAOS_DOWNLOAD="https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/13.2/haos_ova-13.2.vmdk.zip"
wget $HAOS_DOWNLOAD

#unzip image
unzip "haos_ova-13.2.vmdk.zip"

#Setup values
thisVM="HomeAssistant"
vmGroup="Infrastructure"
thisHddPath="${baseVMfolder}/${vmGroup}/${thisVM}/${thisVM}.vmdk"

# Create VM
VBoxManage createvm --name="${thisVM}" --basefolder="${baseVMfolder}"  --groups="/${vmGroup}" --ostype="Linux26_64" --register

#Move disk to VM folder
mv haos_ova-13.2.vmdk  $thisHddPath


VBoxManage storagectl "${thisVM}" --name "SATA Controller" --add sata --controller IntelAHCI
VBoxManage storageattach "${thisVM}" --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium "${thisHddPath}"

# Known changes
## Bridged networking
VBoxManage modifyvm "${thisVM}" --bridgeadapter1 enp5s0

## VRDE (remote desktop)
VBoxManage modifyvm "${thisVM}" --vrde on
VBoxManage modifyvm "${thisVM}" --vrdeport 3396
VBoxManage modifyvm ${thisVM} --vrdeproperty VNCPassword=**REDACTED**

## UEFI vs BIOS (stated in instructions on https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/alternative)
VBoxManage modifyvm  "${thisVM}" --firmware=efi

## HD Audio (stated in instructions on https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/alternative)
VBoxManage modifyvm "${thisVM}" --audio-controller=hda
2

If there is no VRDE session, then it is a VirtualBox issue.
This should be created before the VM starts up, so check everything again.

3

That’s why I included the information about other VMs running just fine, I don’t think it’s VirtualBox in general but likely a configuration with the specific VM. I probably won’t get a chance to clean up my commands to be a script until the weekend, but I’ll post the script when I do.

5

As promised, script is added to main comment. Please let me know if anything jumps out to you.

6

You are probably right that it is the configuration of the VM environment rather than HA, but what is wrong I do not know.
I avoid Windows hypervisors, because there are always fights with directly attached hardware configurations.

7

I was hoping there was some setting I was missing (like UEFI, except I got that one), that would be obvious.

Also, let’s not go throwing the “W” word around, this is hosted on Ubuntu Server. No Windows involved!

8

There is the requirement to disable secureboot.

9

Any chance you know how to do that in VirtualBox?

A quick search reveals a dated reddit post saying the way to switch off UEFI is to go to legacy/bios mode:
https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualbox/comments/o47un0/disable_uefi_secure_boot_in_virtualbox/

Looking at the manual the only mention I see (again from a quick search) is section 8.54 about modifying the signatures in the nvram file, which I think is the wrong path.
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html

10
11

Thanks for the link. TPM was the key phrase I was missing.

So translating the GUI walkthrough into CLI, I’ve added the following option:

--tpm-type= none

Unfortunately I still see no change. While they may have helped, there’s still some other issue going on.