Installing Home Assistant on VMWare Player / Workstation 16 (or 17)

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21

Hi David, when you start the VMWare Player through task scheduler, the only way you will see it running later on, is to select the option " Run only when user ist logged in".

Which kind of defeats the purpose I guess, because you would want the machine to start automatically in the background after a power loss / power restore without any manual actions required - In which case you must select “Run whether user is logged in or not”

Unfortunately with that option ticked, you will never get a gui, even if you log in afterwards.

22

FYI - This guide works perfectly with Windows 11 and VMWARE Player 17.

1 Like
23

Just edit your vmx file manually, and add:

firmware = "efi"
24

Thanks! This helped me too! Maybe this would be handy to add in the instructions. Looked for over 30 minutes :stuck_out_tongue:

25

In Virtualbox I detected my bluetooth device in the devices tab. Can’t seem to find my bluetooth device here unfortunately.

26

Excellent documentation. Thank you!

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27

Thanks for the guide, now my installation is working.
However the last 2 links are dead, only white blank pages are opening , the ones with vm running in the background /auto restart.

Run VMWare Workstation in the background / Auto launch VMWare VM after reboot 527

Do you guys know of another sourse tutorial to make it autorestart?

28

Are you using the free Player or Workstation (Pro)?

29

I tried both of them .

30

If you are using Workstation Pro, the easiest way is to use the Inbuilt auto-start system.

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The other way is to use cli… Something like
(Stop Command as an example)
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmrun.exe" -T player stop H:\VMware\HomeAssistant\HomeAssistant.vmx soft

See more here

Another way, which IMO offers a lot more control and other options.

31

which only works on w10 and vmware workstation >17

32

True But… The VM doesn’t need to be version 17… :joy:

33

You can make a task in windows task scheduler to perform an unattended HA start.

  • make a text file with this content (change to your individual settigs of course):
    “C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmrun.exe” start “C:\Home Assistant VMware\Homeassistant VMware.vmx”
  • rename the text file something like: AutoStartHA.cmd
  • Configure your PC to automatically restart after a power loss.
  • In the task scheduler make a new task
  • ensure that the task will be executed without anybody being logged in (I believe under general ?)
  • Use the PC start as trigger for the task
  • As action you use the execution of the file you made (AutoStartHA.cmd)
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34

I tried multiple times, using HAOS download .ova. Imported into VMware Workstation Pro. Runs fine everytime, have Skyconnect ZigBee and Zooz 800 zwave passed thru. Restore of Nabu Casa Green backup, no problem.

My issues arise when I try using Nut via UPS for gracefull shutdowns of VM, VMware and then the PC, which is Ubuntu desktop.

Every trial of shutdowns appear to work via a script, two Ai helped, lock files, scoreboard filed lock, prohibits VM restart. Tried redo several times.

Just about to the point of uninstall of Vmware and throwing in the towel. Likeable program that it is, this part is very frustrating.

And very little helpful information out there to find.

35

@G2740 This did the trick for me on a Debian host:

This article shows you how to write a VMware Autostart program to automatically start VMware Workstation Pro 16 virtual machines on boot and suspend them before the system shutdown or reboots. Suspending them is a lot faster :wink:

1 Like
36

Thank you, I’ll give this a try.

37

Tried and failed, couldn’t ever get away from locked files. Fix? Kvm right in Ubuntu.