Newly installed Generic x86-64 on mac mini - boot hangs during startup

I had a Mac Mini (mid 2011) on the shelf, so I tried to install HA OS using method number 2 described in Generic x86-64 in the documentation, following the video How To Install Home Assistant On Any x86 PC.

Everything went successful and my Mac immediately starts to boot HA OS after restarting it, but after 20-30s something it stops booting and hangs on the following step (it seems):

i915 0000:00:02:0: enabling device (0000 -> 0003)

See image below. Any tips or comments on how to proceed - or will it not work…?

I played with a MacMini at one point and I found that Apple have a strong tendency to replace the vendor ID on many of their hardware parts, even though the parts are otherwise similar with the original.
This change makes driver installation fail, but first after the installation have tried to find one that works.
the i915 is a driver that covers a huge set of products and the span covers many years of products, so it is pretty big. It should eventually fail, but it is an unacceptable wait in the boot process.
I found a way to rename some of the vendor IDs back to the original ones, which solved the issue, but if it is possible here, I do not know.

Ah - thanks.
So if I understand you right, I just need to be patient and eventually the boot will continue. I will try that and see if I can make modifications later to the drivers later.

Do you know if these modifications will be persistent or will I need to fix it after updates…like after a HA OS update?

The modification persists.
You will have to find a tools to change information directly in the hardwares firmware.

Wow - interesting.

The boot has been hanging now for 2h - shall I give up? :roll_eyes:

It should get there eventually, but 2 hours might be far from the limit.
A standard timeout for computers are often around 3 minutes and with maybe several hundred of devices listed in the driver file, then you might be far from the end yet.
The developers might even have chosen a longer timeout and just one minute more with several hundred devices means hours more waiting.

I also found this thread about updating the BIOS firmware: MacMiniIntel - Debian Wiki
Your machine is probably a version 5.1, but could also be a 5.3.

Thank you!

I will keep it try to boot for some time more…

Seems like my model is a 5.2 (as it is 2.5Ghz), 5.1 is 2.3Ghz and 5.3 was the server version. I will look into if I can find a BIOS/firmware update for it.

image

I have HA running on a 2012ish i7 Mac Mini server at the Men’s Shed I attend. When I had issues with a direct install I ended up installing Proxmox and have HAOS installed as a VM using the Tteck script.

Works well, even the internal Bluetooth adapter is detected.

5.2 have a Radeon video card, so it can’t be that one. i915 is Intels on-board video card series.

There is a shift exactly between 2011 and 2012. 2012 versions seems to have a fully functional UEFI BIOS and that makes all the difference, because the graphic card is managed through that.

@WallyR

Aha - good to know. I put the serial number of the Mini on this tool - and above screenshot was the result.

Still hanging on the boot - now for 4h+…

@gaz99

Thanks - maybe I should look into Proxmox. As the machine was old I wanted to try to run as “bare” as possible. The plan is to put it and run it headless in our newly bought summerhouse, ie - it would be great if it (in most cases) reboots and starts up HA after any potential power failures (but I am actually unclear if MacMini supports direct power on I realized as I wrote this…).

There is a magic command line incantation (that varies depending on the hardware) with no feedback to enable auto power on. The only way to test it is to pull the plug !!

I can’t find the link at moment but will update this when I do.

Auto power on info

Thanks @gaz99 - how did you install Proxmox on top of MacOS / Debian / “bare metal” ?

No OS, just Proxmox installed on the box from USB.

I found this Install Home Assistant OS with KVM on Ubuntu headless (CLI only) guide instead and it worked smooth on my 2011 model of Mac Mini, using Ubuntu Server in the bottom.