Installing Home Assistant Supervised using Debian 12
Before proceeding, please read the following information
It is being made increasing difficult to run a Supervised installation, by choosing to do so you understand the guidelines linked in the next paragraph. If you are new to Home Assistant and/or Linux, then this installation type is most likely not for you and you should choose to run Home Assistant OS on your machine.
A PR has now been merged into the Supervised installer that will block any attempt at installation on an OS that is not supported, such as Ubuntu. DO NOT post in this thread about your OS not being supported, you must run Debian.
Using Debian 12 and following a strict set of guidelines available HERE will give you an officially supported installation of Home Assistant Supervised. If you choose at anytime to install additional software to the Debian operating system, your installation may become officially unsupported.
If you do not understand what this means, or that making almost any changes to the underlying OS may render your install Unsupported/Unhealthy, this installation method is not for you and you should install HA OS. If you do not require the supervisor, then installing HA Container may be a better option and will allow you full control over the OS to install additional software and Docker containers.
This guide will help you to install Home Assistant Supervised, on almost any machine type you choose. This guide has been tested on machines including a Lenovo m72e, Dell Optiplex SFF 990, Dell Optiplex USFF 780 and a HP T520 thin client. If you are using a Raspberry Pi, follow this guide.
While every effort has been made to ensure this guide complies with ADR-0014, no guarantee can be made it does now, or in the future.
In this guide, you will be using Debian 12 as the operating system. This type of installation is what is called “headless” and after the installation is complete, you will not need to have a keyboard, mouse or monitor attached, although you can if you prefer.
What is Home Assistant Supervised?
Home Assistant is a full UI managed home automation ecosystem that runs Home Assistant Core, the Home Assistant Supervisor and add-ons. It comes pre-installed on Home Assistant OS, but can be installed on any Linux system. It leverages Docker, which is managed by the Home Assistant Supervisor plus the added benefit of dozens of add-ons (think app store) that work natively inside the Home Assistant environment.
If you are new to Home Assistant, you can now proceed to Section 1 if you need assistance with installing Debian 12. If you already have Debian 12 installed and wish to move on to installing Home Assistant, move on to Section 2.
Note: If you are unning Home Assistant Supervised on Debian 11 and just want to upgrade the OS to Debian 12 without starting from scratch you can use THIS upgrade guide.
Section 1 – Install Debian 12
If you would like a step by step guide on how to install Debian 12 to your machine, click here to expand for instructions.
1.1) Start by downloading debian-live-12.x.x-amd64-standard.iso from HERE.
1.2) While Debian is downloading, you will need some other programs to help with the setup and installation. To burn the Debian ISO image to a USB thumb drive, you will use a program called Rufus which can be downloaded from HERE.
1.3) You will now create a bootable USB drive using Rufus and the Debian image you have downloaded. Insert a blank USB drive of at least 8gb into your PC, open Rufus and choose your USB from the drop-down menu. Now select the Debian ISO image you downloaded, and click Start. If you get any prompts, select OK or Yes to continue. When this has completed, you can move on.
1.4) Insert the USB you have just made into the new machine, connect a monitor, Ethernet cable, keyboard and mouse, and power on the machine. You will need to select the USB drive as the boot device, to do this, you will need to press something like F12 or DEL on your keyboard immediately when the machine is powered on.
1.5) The first screen you should be able to select from is Boot Menu, on this screen, select Advanced Install Options, then Graphical Debian Installer and Install
1.6) Next will be Language. Choose your language and click continue.
1.7) Next will be Select your location. Choose your country and click continue.
1.8) Next will be Configure the keyboard. Select your keyboard type and click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks which will take 1-2 minutes.
1.9) Next will be Configure the network. Here you can name your machine, the default name will be debian. Choose a name and click continue. You can skip the next page by clicking continue as you do not need to set a domain name.
1.10) Next will be Set up users and passwords. You will be asked to create a password for the root user. Make a note of the password you choose here, and click continue.
1.11) Next will be Set up users and passwords again. Enter a username, click continue and on the next screen, enter a password for this user account. Make note of both of these, you will need them later.
1.12) Next will be Configure the clock. Select the correct time zone and click continue.
1.13) Next will be Partition Disks. Select Guided - use entire disk and then click continue. On the next screen make sure the correct disk is selected and click continue. On the next screen select All files in one partition and click continue. On the next screen, make sure Finish partitioning and write changes to disk is selected, and click continue. On the next screen, select Yes and then click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks. This will take 1-2 mins.
1.14) Next will be Configure the package manager. Select Yes and click continue. Select your Country and click continue. You can leave the default selection deb.debian.org selected, or select another mirror of your choosing, and click continue. Leave the next page blank and click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks. This will take a few minutes.
1.15) Next will be Install the GRUB bootloader. Select Yes and click continue. Now select the drive you are installing Debian on, and click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks. This will take 1-2 mins and then installation will be complete.
1.16) In Debian, your user will not be a member of the sudo group so cannot run administrative commands. After the system has rebooted, log in as the root user and the password you set during Step 1.10. To add your user to the sudo group enter this command, and press Enter.
usermod -aG sudo username
where username is the one you setup during Step 1.11
1.17) Log out of the root account by pressing ctrl-d on your keyboard then to login to the machine using the username and password you created in Step 1.11.
1.18) Once this has completed, you will need to find the IP address of the machine. You can do this by checking your router, or by typing this command into the terminal.
ip a
You should now see some information on your screen showing network configuration. You are looking for information like inet 192.168.1.150/24, or, inet 10.1.1.50/24 depending on your network setup. This is the IP of the machine and you can now use this to connect to the machine from another PC using a program lite Putty. Information on how to do this is at Step 3.3 below.
Section 2 - Install OS Agent, Docker and Dependencies
You will now install the OS Agent for Home Assistant. It is used for Home Assistant OS and Home Assistant Supervised installation types and it allows the Home Assistant Supervisor to communicate with the host operating system.
2.1) In terminal (or connected to your machine via SSH using Putty - see Step 3.3 for info), run the following commands to update the Debian OS, install Docker and the required dependencies for the OS Agent and the Supervised installer. Execute the following commands one at a time.
sudo -i
apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y
apt --fix-broken install
apt install apparmor jq wget curl udisks2 libglib2.0-bin network-manager dbus lsb-release systemd-journal-remote systemd-resolved -y
curl -fsSL get.docker.com | sh
2.2) Visit the OS Agent page and then replace the version number with the latest available, into the commands below. (i.e. replace all references to 1.6.0 with the latest available)
Execute the following commands one at a time.
wget https://github.com/home-assistant/os-agent/releases/download/1.6.0/os-agent_1.6.0_linux_x86_64.deb
dpkg -i os-agent_1.6.0_linux_x86_64.deb
Section 3 – Install Home Assistant Supervised
With the OS Agent and dependencies installed, you can move on to installing Home Assistant Supervised.
3.1) Enter each line of the below commands into the terminal and execute them one at a time.
If you have rebooted since section 2, make sure you are running as root before executing the below commands.
sudo -i
Execute the following commands one at a time.
wget https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer/releases/latest/download/homeassistant-supervised.deb
apt install ./homeassistant-supervised.deb
If you run into the ‘Waiting for checkonline.home-assistant.io - network interface might be down…’ error, open a 2nd Putty/SSH Window (leave the first one going) and enter
sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf
Then arrow down to nameserver and change the default value to 1.1.1.1, then press ‘Ctrl+x’ on your Keyboard, Press ‘y’ and then ‘enter’ to confirm. The installer should now continue without error.
3.2) You may be prompted to choose a machine type during the installation process, if so, choose generic-x86-64.
The installation time is generally under 5 mins, however it can take longer so be patient. You can check the progress of Home Assistant setup by connecting to the IP address of your machine in Chrome/Firefox on port 8123. (e.g. http://192.168.1.150:8123)
Once you can see the login screen, the setup has been completed and you can set up an account name and password. If you are new to Home Assistant you can now configure any smart devices that Home Assistant has automatically discovered on your network. If you have an existing Home Assistant install and you have a snapshot or YAML files you wish to restore, refer to the document Backing up and Restoring your configuration.
You have completed the installation of Home Assistant Supervised on your Debian machine. It is recommended that you log into your machine at least once a month and use the following command to download security patches and keep the OS up to date. You can do this directly on the machine itself via the terminal.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y
3.3) If you wish to install Open-SSH so you can remotely connect to your Home Assistant machine from another PC.
If you install Open-SSH you will not be adhering to the guidelines of ADR-0014 and therefore will not have an officially supported installation, however, installing Open-SSH will not break your machine. Run the following from console.
sudo apt install openssh-server -y
If you do choose to install and use Open-SSH, you can then use software called PuTTY, available HERE.
Putty is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. You can use Putty to execute commands on the Debian machine from your Windows PC. (Use Terminal on a Mac). To connect to the Debian machine via Putty, you will need the IP of the machine from Step 1.19, and the username and password you created from Step 1.10.
If you have an existing Home Assistant install and you have a snapshot or YAML files you wish to restore, refer to Home Assistant website on backing up and restoring your configuration, located HERE
Section 4 - Unhealthy Installation
If you are faced with the HA Supervisor showing you the 'Unhealthy Installation' error, click here to expand and follow this procedure to fix it.
4.1) Install the SSH & Web Terminal add-on from with the HA Supervisor add-on store. It looks like this.
Configure the add-on so you can connect to the HA container. Here is an example of a simple working configuration you can use, adjust the username and password to suit.
ssh:
username: USERNAME
password: PASSWORD
authorized_keys: []
sftp: false
compatibility_mode: false
allow_agent_forwarding: false
allow_remote_port_forwarding: false
allow_tcp_forwarding: false
zsh: true
share_sessions: false
packages: []
init_commands: []
You will need to change the port to 23 (or other unused port number of your choosing) in the Network section of the Configuration tab. Once you have installed and configured the add-on, move on to the next step.
4.2) Using Putty, login to the HA machine using the IP of the machine and port 23. Use the username and password you configured in the previous step.
4.3) Once logged in you can now execute the following command;
ha jobs options --ignore-conditions healthy
Once you have done this, you should see a message saying, Command completed successfully. You can type exit to leave the shell connection. You can now also turn off/stop the SSH & Web Terminal add-on in HA as you will no longer need it. It can be restarted at anytime.
I welcome feedback on this guide, please feel free to tag me or PM if you have suggestions on how to make improvements.
Thank you to nickrout for testing, feedback and edits to help improve this guide and to others who have contributed code and ideas including Tamsy, you support is appreciated.
Old installation instructions using the script installer can be found on my Github, HERE