I have encountered many problems attempting to install home-assistant on Mac OS Catalina 10.15.x, and Linux Mint 18.2 and Linux Mint 19.3. I’ve tried docker, python install, snap install.
I’ve tried these different methods, only to find deficiencies with each one. I have some questions, and suggestions.
Are there too many ways that home assistant can be installed/ Wouldn’t it be better to have say, 2 or 3 ways to do it, and that’s it?
Isn’t python version management a fundamental requirement to simplifying the installation of Home Assistant, regardless of which method is used? Inconsistency in the OS python environment likely will create a host of additional problems beyond Home Assistant.
Shouldn’t Python knowledge be a fundamental requirement? Not having knowledge of Python severely limits the ability of the user to manage, and understand HA. Learning Python is a very valuable skill.
i set out to learn what is the easiest way to install HA. So far, what I have learned, is that when I specify the python version using pyenv, many problems disappear. HA is written in python. Therefore, python version management shoudl be a required pre-requisite. Real Python has a link to pyenv. This link should be referenced as part of the pre-requisites for installation. Using pyenv does not have any adverse side effects, as far as I am aware.
I could not install Home Assistant onto linux mint 19.3, until I had first, installed pyenv, installed python 3.8.0, and selected python 3.8.0. Once I did that, I was able to easily install Home Assistant directly onto Linux Mint 19.3. I have not installed onto MacOs Catalina 10.15.x yet using pyenv, but will install it soon. I have previously installed Home Assistant using docker on Mac OS, which is not trivial. However, I encountered similar issues to the Linux Mint install. pyenv is platform independant, whereever python runs, pyenv will also run.
Minimizing impacts due to having multiple versions of python running on a machine is absolutely required for running HA. It should be part of the documentation spec as a pre-requesite.
This should minimize support, whilst simultaneously increasing the number of successful installations.
If you just installed it on any of the supported platforms you wouldn’t have problems. Everything you listed is not supported by HA. Check out the docs. It’s a pretty brainless install that doesn’t require python knowledge on Ubuntu or Debian. And if you go the home assistant supervised route its 100% brainless. Drop the image and go.
Unfortunately, not everyone can do that. If it is possible to install onto a platform that avoids most, if not all of the issues one might otherwise encounter, then it is beneficial to everyone if such pathways exist.
Adding pyenv as a pre-requisite is a win/win for everyone. There is minimal downside.
Not sure what to tell you. You’ll have to make a case to the devs, not the community. Feature request is where you’d want to start or an issue on github.
Ok, let’s just say for the sake of argument that the developers decided to only allow HA to be installed 3 ways - docker supervised, HassOS, and in a Python venv.
How does that solve the following?
You would still be arbitrarily limiting users. And apparently that would include you since all of those methods are currently fully supported yet you can’t seem to find a suitably easy way to install HA on any of your systems.
Don’t get me wrong. It does make it much harder to try to help others when there are 17 different ways to install HA and you frequently need to start out by asking “how did you install HA?” but if the developers want to officially support several ways and then the community wants to come up with ways of installing on different platforms and they are willing to support it then I’m not sure it makes sense to say (to you…) that “you can’t install it on that system”.
Most officially supported ways of installing HA mitigate the need to figure out which python version to run. If you install it in a non-standard manner then its up to you to figure out how to do that.
I can’t say that I am all that familiar yet with Home Assistant, because the installation issues, and the implications of those issues, has caused me pause. Unfortunately for me, my target platforms have all been non-standard on the target machine, in some way. Docker on a Mac, Snap on a mac, Snap on Linux 19.3 (was a snap!, btw), python install mac, python install linux mint 19.3 64 bit, …
I’ve kept playing with it because I don’t really understand containers, or like them (docker on a Mac???). What I have concluded so far, which may or may not be correct, is the following:
HA is written in Python. The target release version of Python for HA will likely differ from the version(s) of Python on the target machine. Failure to properly upgrade python to an appropriate level of compatibility with the HA release version may cause (will likely cause) problems at some point in the future, for those seeking to develop in python on the same machine where HA is installed. It may introduce problems in the future, due to the version differences between the HA version of python, and the target OS version of Python, as part of the normal usage.
It is likely very beneficial to upgrade the version of python to >= ? than the HA release version. It may be beneficial to standardize the python version that you have on all your computers, in order to avoid python version mismatch hell, between python, pip, … A HA machine may or not be a dedicated application. For example, it would be nice to run security system software alongside HA.
Because some OS’s require that multiple versions of python are installed, AND, cannot be deleted (eg. Mac OS 10.15 Catalina requires python 2.7), without seriously affecting the OS in a number of different ways, a workable solution appears to be to use pyenv to manage the python version issue, prior to installing HA, regardless of which method ends up being used.
Python is eating everything. This is great. But, unfortunately has led to version management hell. Which is still manageable, but, it may be unwise for HA to ignore the implications of version incompatibility between HA and everyone else. It might be wiser, from an HA support perspective, to identify the issue up front. This educates the user as to why things are the way they are, whilst at the same time providing insight and direction for the user to solve their own problems, should they arise post install.
And if you use docker with HA supervised, none of this is an issue but you may have installation issues because the scripts aren’t tested against anything other than debian and ubuntu.
Another nube to linux and home assistant. Basically, all I want is to have a central place for all my different smart device to be handled.
I have a stand alone computer running linux mint 19.3 Tricia. also I have, after many trials and errors and reinstallations of the OS (and refusing to take the easy way out and go hang myself in the garage LOL) i managed to get a docker container running Home Assistant. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Add-on Store and can’t seem to find out the combination to install hacs. I can’t seem to be able to locate the /config location to extract the files into. I found the directory where the configuration.yaml file is but apparently that’s not the proper place.
Can i just install Hassio over top of the instance of home assistant that I have running to be able to access the store?
Where will I find that config file the HA needs to recognize hacs?