New setup on Pi - checking potential SD card issues

Installation
1

Hi there,

As a user of samsung smartthings for a number of years, I’m making the step to HA today. My RPi is arriving this afternoon!

I have been reading on the forum about a number of issues with SD cards failing down the line, so want to make sure I set things up properly from scratch in terms of backing things up appropriately, however I can’t find specific guidance in the docs or forum…

I did read something about streaming logs causing an issue, and there being a possibility to send those to the cloud instead of the SD card, but again, I can’t find anything further on that here…

For background - I’m experienced with Linux and Docker, so considering going down the docker route, rather than Hass.io, although may give both a go.

Any signposting would be greatly appreciated… looking forward to joining this community!

2

Hi @robmc
If you are going to have long term solution, why don’t you use SSD or HDD?

As for me, I prefer hass.io installed over Raspbian
GitHub - home-assistant/supervised-installer: Installer for a generic Linux system

Also hassio has its own snapshot mechanism :sunglasses:

3

Firstly, welcome. I’m sure you will come to love HA.

Regarding your above comment, Hass.io uses Docker. There are a few flavors of HA, and a few of those use Docker.

There is a straight up Home Assistant docker image, this will not give you the ability to use any add-ons that work with Hass.io, instead, you will need to manually download, install and manage any software you wish to use with HA yourself.

Another docker option is to install Hass.io using an OS such as Raspbian/Ubuntu/Debain (my preferred option). This gives you full access to the underlying OS to run other software, as well as Hass.io and all the add-ons it has available, keeps things simple.

There is of course HassOS which is a minimal OS that only runs Hass.io and any add-ons you choose to use. You will not have an ability to use software outside of the Hass.io ecosystem.

You can also do a venv install, check out THIS page on the HA website for some more info on install options.

You can limit the recorder to prevent many items from logging, this will help prolong the life of your SD card and minimize the home-assistant.log file. I have been running an SD card Hass.io install on a Pi3 at my parents house with no SD card issues for a long time. Here is my recorder config to give you an idea of what you can limit and how to set it up. I stole this from someone else some time ago and adjusted to suit my needs.

recorder:
  purge_interval: 1
  purge_keep_days: 30
  include:
    domains:
      - sensor
      - binary_sensor
      - switch
      - light
      - automations
      - device_tracker
      - vacuum
      - group
      - input_boolean
  exclude:
    event_types:
      - service_removed
      - service_executed
      - platform_discovered
      - homeassistant_start
      - homeassistant_stop
      - feedreader
      - service_registered
      - call_service
      - component_loaded
      - logbook_entry
      - system_log_event
      - automation_triggered
      - script_started
      - timer_out_of_sync
4

Ah this is brilliant - I’ve followed your advice and now installed Hass.io in a docker - I hadn’t realised you could do that!

I’ve also followed the recorder config, so will play around with that.

I may still look for a more robust solution re: Pi hard drive, but happy I can now get access to the core OS and also have the full Hass.io features.

1 Like