Port forwarding has nothing to do with the OS running the service. You’re just port forwarding to the IP address running the service. You don’t have to know anything about Linux to make that part work.
Adding Proxmox adds yet another layer to what you have to learn. A server version gives you a machine with a black screen and a command prompt and then it is up hill.
I am 54 years old so at 52 you are a young snotty boy (giggle).
Even though I have played with Linux since the 90s I could not be bothered with a server version myself. I use the same Ubuntu Mate for servers as well as my laptop. The reason I tell you to go mainstream Ubuntu is that the communities behind have made a great effort of making the desktop and settings familiar with Windows and Mac. And that is important for beginners with Windows as reference
The distro that looks very much like Windows and is very beginner friendly is probably Linux Mint. I have set my preference now on Ubuntu Mate because I love the Mate desktop which you can easily make look like Windows or Mac OS. Out of the box it is like Windows but out of the box the start menu is at the top like on a Mac.
The important thing is to pick a distro that builds on Ubuntu because this way you can follow the install recipe from the official Home Assistant documentation.
All desktop Ubuntu flavors have nice file managers that works like you know from windows - again important for a newbie. The point here is to get you fast from blank disk to a machine that has a running Home Assistant and then you can learn more Linux stuff as required a few minutes per day. And make sure to follow the procedure on the official Home assistant site. Youtube and misc geek sites have plenty of out of date that will make you feel you are 72 when it does not work. Home Assistant has moved a long way the past 12 months. Only the official docs are up to date.
It takes 15 minutes to install a Ubuntu whatever of which most is looking at the screen and waiting. And it takes 5 minutes to type the few lines of commands in a terminal. And then you are up running after Home Assistant has had 5 minutes to do its initial discovery process.
Last night, until early in the morning… I tried to install proxmox in an old desktop machine, but I didn’t manage it. From the begging of the installation I had problem with “no network interface found”.
I found a workaround for that but after 1-2 hours of searching and trying I decided to install ubuntu 
.
I do like a a lot the interface and yes it is close to windows logic.
I managed to install HA.
I made a new account in for ubuntu HA. I did that thinking to have this one as a backup or for trials.
(break to sleep)
So, now I am a little stack
-
I can’t find out which is the easy way to upload the snapshot I have to the ubuntu.
Yesterday I installed samba following this tutorial but I didn’t manage to connect to my rp3+ files although I saw the hassio icon.
I haven’t installed though samba or anything to ubuntu HA since I am planning to restore. Is that correct? -
Until now I haven’t installed ssh in my rp3+ HA. Is it necessary in order to make a restore?
-
I have installed samba in rp3+
What I need right now and I don’t know how
a. to make ubuntu HA same as the rp3+
b. to have access to my windows laptop browser to ubuntu HA.
Any help on this please?
- bear in mind that for me is a testing period for all that.
Hi. I am happy you took my advice and went the beginner friendly route.
You are very very far
The easy route to restoring the backup from the pi is to go via your normal windows machine
1 create a snapshot in the old Home Assistant. Note that when it is create you can download it in your browser and load it to your windows machine.
- I cannot see how you have setup the samba share on the new machine. But the end goal is to transfer the download file from your windows to a specific directory on the new Ubuntu machine.
The super simple way is to copy it to a usb stick on the windows machine and plug it to the Ubuntu. And because you have a nice GUI (cunning smile) that pops up on the desktop and you can easily move it to its right place with the file manager or with mv on command line.
It must go to /usr/share/hassio/backup
It is a single large file.
It should then show up in the new Home Assistant as a snapshot you can restore. I cannot remember if you have to restart home assistant to make it see it. Try without first.
Once snapshot is restored you should be up running again but on a much faster machine.
@Makis have a go at following my guide for an Ubuntu install HERE. There is also a guide for an RPi in the same folder, so make sure to choose the Ubuntu guide.
You can use this guide on your old desktop machine, it should work very well for you. I use an old Dell Optiplex 990 SFF to run my Hass.io on Ubuntu, along with a number of other docker containers and Hass.io add-ons.
This is very user friendly, and involves some light reading and some copy/paste to get you up and running. It is an easy guide to follow and will have you up and running in one afternoon.
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thats what I am searching… I can’t find it.
How can I access it from gui?
i have found the folder but won’t let me copy or move it ( i have transfer it with usb)
“access denied”
I can move a file from /backup to desktop but not from desktop to /backup
I cannot remember if the standard file manager has an easy admin mode.
The problem is that the directory you copy to is probably owned by root (administrator on Linux is called root).
Here is a quick Linux commands for beginners for the terminal.
sudo means “super user do” and everytime you need to do something as root in a terminal you put sudo in front
cp is copy
mv is move
cd is change directory
mkdir is make directory
File names are case sensitive
Paths are with / instead of the windows \
So to copy your snapshot you open a terminal and …
sudo cp from_path /usr/share/hassio/backup
Where from_path is the path to your file incl the filename
I will be sitting in a plane the next 12 hours from Copenhagen to Singapore and then on to Malaysia so it will be tomorrow before I can help again.
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MERSY!
wtf is going on? I can not move a file in MY pc??
i have made an administrator account and still can access the files?
That is the reason virusses cannot spread easily on Linux. The normal user cannot put bad things in system areas without actively doing it with the little sudo. You actually have a bit of this in windows where you have to do certain things as administrator.
ok after 2 hours of searching I manage it to restore it.
Now I need to be able to access HA from my windows browser. What should I do?
Access it.
Access it how?
Through Windows explorer or through a browser?
Windows explorer: install samba on your Ubuntu machine. Share out the directory for your hassio.
Browser: connect to the IP address of the Ubuntu machine on port 8123 http://ipaddress:8123
I found it. from browser. now it is working.
although now I am in 2 other problems.
-
I reboot ubantu and for several tries it was opening in a black screen.
I tried several stuff I found in internet and with right shift after some time it booted.
Now I don’t know if this has been fixed or not. -
in rp3+ I had the sonoff component.
It says that I should disabled it but i forgot about it. Now I don’t know how to make it work
When it says completely deactivate the component what exactly should I do. erase it from configuration?
Put a # in front of the component
I did that. it gave no problem in log.
when I remove it again it gives in log the following
Component error: sonoff - Integration ‘sonoff’ not found.
should I delete the file sonoff from custom_components and reinstall them?
I don’t know anything about the sonoff custom component
Probably .
Today everything is working in HA but I haven’t find out why Ubuntu opens in black screen after a reboot. I have found a workaround but involves to open in recovery mode. So thank you all for the help!
Did you try this :
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
sudo reboot
The ubuntu-drivers autoinstall command installs drivers that are appropriate for automatic installation including their dependencies, and the proprietary graphics driver will also be updated automatically when an update is available.
yes i did
“No drivers found for installation”