Hi currently I’m using HA with Ubuntu 18 LTS in supervised mode and so far I’m really happy with it.
But now I’m facing the same issue as many others: the supervisor reports my system as unhealthy as well as unsupported.
I know it’s really time to update my outdated Ubuntu installation, but as I understand it is also not supported.
Because I’m using a HP Proliant server which is also running some other services, Home Assistant OS is not an option for me. Also adding a Raspi just for HA is also not an option because I already have a full server with mirrored hard drives and so on.
So I would be willing reinstalling my server with debian. But is this a future proof solution? Will the supervisor mode still be supported in the future?
And the support states that bug reports and so on would only be accepted on a clean debian install without other packages. This also won’t be an option because as mentioned before, the machine should serve some other services.
So I’m curious about the recommended long term supported installation method / operating system base?
Yeah, there are so many issues with HA trying to lock down peoples installs. It’s all very “Apple-esque” to me.
Obviously I can’t know what will happen in the future but from what you are describing as your needs I would recommend staying away from any supervised installs (HA OS or HA Supervised) and just run HA Core which installs in docker and doesn’t suffer from the limitations of the other install methods.
The only thing you miss by using HA Core is the add-on store. But you don’t really have to have that available since everything there is also available as stand-alone docker containers. If you have any computer experience (which it seems that you might) then spinning up docker containers for most things you want isn’t too hard once you get the concepts down and can follow the instructions on the docker hub for the containers.
Can I ask where in you are seeing the message about your system being unhealthy? is it in the dashboard or logs somewhere?
Its really a bummer that the supervised installations get practically abandoned.
There should be a “supervisor lite” that just handles Snapshots, Addons and core updates so that those really useful and user-friendly parts remain usable. Many of the features that now cause issues for supervised installs are not needed in that context anyway.
Similar issue here, can’t update because old server hardware and Linux version is not supported. The plethora of installation methods is confusing and daunting, not to mention the change in terminology from what it used to be.
For the moment I have just frozen my HA installation, and I’m patching it as best I can while gradually giving up functionality as bits of it get irrevocably broken.
For the future I am seriously torn between two alternatives:
Commit to buying a new Raspberry Pi every 3 years or so and install an image with the latest HA. Re-do my configuration from scratch.
Scrap HA as too big a time sink and go with something else a little less flexible but less work.
Maybe somebody could be persuaded to start an “HA Stable” fork off 1.0.0 that stops changing anything except for bug fixes and internal changes needed to continue support for external apis with the same stable functionality.
I’m a developer myself, so I can understand a lot of the things going on.
And I don’t want to freeze my installation because I want to use new features, bugfixes and so on. And the longer you wait upgrading, the bigger the step will be. I already had FHEM and openHab running, butI like HA best so far and don’t want to switch again.
Until now it wasn’t clear to me what the supervisor really does and what possibilities exists. As far as I understand it now, I could just let the HA core run as docker container.
And also as far as I understand, the core doesn’t do really exotic stuff. Just running a python application. So I don’t know why this wouldn’t still run under Ubuntu 18.4.
That’s the main things it does. I guess along with some other background stuff that it checks that causes it to break itself if everything isn’t exactly right.
But as I said I use the HA Core install that gets installed via docker and I don’t miss any of thoise other supervisor functions at all. And at times like this (and a few in the past) I’m glad I decided to run things the way I did. The supervisor does “make it easier” if all you want is a machine dedicated to just running HA or you don’t have any other computer skills but that “ease” comes with some (not so) obvious limitations.
Sorry to say it’s not that easy.
the supervisor is built to restart itself automatically using system services. And the HA version that is installed via the supervisor as far as I know can’t continue to run without the supervisor running.
What I would do is back up your config files (but don’t use a snapshot since you can’t use that to restore to a non-supervisor install) then uninstall your current version of HA. After its gone then install the HA Core version of HA and then copy all of the config files back to your cnew config directory.
That’s strange. I run a test HA Supervised v118.5 install and I’m running it on Debian 9 but I don’t get the “unhealthy” error anywhere as far as I can see. I get the “unsupported” warning but I really don’t care about that.
