Installing Home Assistant Supervised on a Raspberry Pi using Debian 12

depends on what is updated if you need to reboot. Generally it will give you a message say if a reboot is needed to load a new kernel etc. You also will need to reboot if the update touches docker etc.

You can also log off (close the SSH-session) and thereafter log back in. If a system reboot is necessary it will be shown at the CLI.

Thanks. Where would I see this message? After I did the update yesterday I lost the connection from the web browser to HA. My session was still good in SSH. I should have gotten log info, but did not as I assumed that HA did not start after the update. I did the reboot and the connection restored. I am not fluent enough with Linux to understand what is being updated.

@Tamsy I’ll try next time closing and reopening and see what message I get.

I have updated I believe 4 times since I installed and each time I needed to reboot or I was either not connecting or getting errors in HA logs. Once I rebooted all worked again.

Bill

Usually if a system reboot is needed it shows up after a new connection to the device is made through CLI. It shows similar to:

bla bla
Last Login: Sun Jul 25 00:42:09 2021 from 192.168.xxx.xxx
System reboot needed

me@myha:~$ 
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That had never showed in my existing ssh window. I saw errors or lost connection after monthly updating. Maybe I am doing something incorrectly while updating?
Rebooting via sudo reboot has always fixed my issue. Again not enough experience or data to understand what I am seeing.

The original purpose of my question came from another user that was having errors after an update. I was trying to get a consensus among experienced users on what is the proper method for updating Debian / HA Supervisor.

Well you are ssh’ing into the host so it will work independently from HA.
You will see the message in the terminal… usually via a pop up but if there is a container.io or docker update HA won’t come back up till you reboot anyway. Basically if HA is dead after an update reboot is the easiest way to bring it back again.

Tamsy’s message will only show when you login to ssh.

What is being updated BTW is the host system.

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you could follow my document here GitHub - tirtadji-com/rpi_debian_ha_supervised: Installation for official Debian running Home-Assistant Supervised

Does this address the boot issue, or are you just trying to point people away from the forums for some reason?

well, why you are so offensive? Just trying to help. As far as my document detail how you should avoid updating the kernel so it wont disable the USB boot method. Which I believe the cause of the problem.

If you have a fix, note it here so other can easily find it.

Unless you have linked to an old version of the Debian image to download, the kernel is already updated in the available download, hence the boot issue.

Yesterday I try a reboot of my Raspberry Pi Host (after at least two weeks without rebooting) and boot was again unsuccessfull.

Seems the same problem in the config.txt: kernel=vmlinuz-5.10… and initrd.img-5.10…

When problem first appeared I did sudo apt-mark hold linux-image-arm64 and in the meanwhile I never did any Debian 10 upgrade but reboot was unsuccessfull.

Now I’m doing again but apparently: “linux-image-arm64 was already set on hold.”

What change my config.txt and prevent my Home Automation Hub to boot?

There is a long term solution?

As I wrote it earlier: I am pretty sure there will be no fix for this one. Just wait for Debian 11 being officially supported by HA Supervised. Or be one of the bleeding edge users and move to Bullseye now accepting that it is not officially supported yet.

Sorry, I think I missed the messages where you explain this issue because in the past three months I had no issue. I don’t think I can use unsupported solutions because apparently I’m not even able to manage supported solutions in a consistent and stable way.

So, to summarize, until HA Supervised will be supported Debian 11 (any idea of when?), I should expect that from time to time in a random way my HA Hub will not be able to boot/reboot? Or there is at least some event that trigger this problem?

Thanks

Which kernel version is installed right now?

$ sudo uname -a

will tell you

Aa I did three months ago, I manually edited the config.txt in the RASPIFIRM FAT partition of the SSD, reverting to …5.9… and now the HA HUB boots again.

The kernel version, as of your command, is now:

Linux homeassistant 5.9.0-0.bpo.5-arm64 #1 SMP Debian 5.9.15-1~bpo10+1 (2020-12-31) aarch64 GNU/Linux

That kernel should not give you any boot problems.

Run:

$ sudo dmesg

right after a reboot. The output should show if/what is going wrong (if the system has successfully booted).

Is there going to be an upgrade path to Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ now that it is officially released?

From memory, the ADR for Supervised states within 4 months of an official update to Debian.

Edit: “When a new major version of Debian is released, the previous major version is dropped, with a deprecation time of 4 months. An exception to this rule occurs if the new version does not meet the requirements of the Supervisor.”

I had read ADR. How do we know if the new version meets the requirements of the supervisor?