R.I.P Hassbian

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It’s time for what was once the simplest way to install Home Assistant to retire.

R.I.P Hassbian

Some of you will probably wonder why Hassbian is being retired and I’ll try to give a proper motivation. First of is the age-old factor of time. I as the lead developer of Hassbian haven’t been able to give it the time and attention it requires, and there have been few others that have pushed the project further. The one exception being @ludeeus who’s done most of the heavy lifting when the image was retooled to use a proper apt package and repository. Second is that it’s no longer the best option for most to use as an installation method. Hass.io has surpassed Hassbian in almost all ways I can imagine.

Next Step for Hassbian

Since Hassbian has been around for quite a while, there are quite a few users that don’t want Hassbian to go away. To make this as easy as possible for those users, here’s the plan.

  • The repositories pi-gen and hassbian-scripts hosting the Hassbian projects files will be moved to a new organization.
  • A last release will be done by me mid Q4 2019. This image will be hosted under the pi-gen repository.
  • The pi-gen repository will be reworked to work with a standard raspbian image with minor modifications for anyone wanting to create their own “Hassbian like” image. This has always been possible, but the current repository is a bit out of date with the current layout of the Raspbian image.
  • The hassbian-scripts package will get a final release and will continue to be hosted on Gitlab. Some minor changes will be made to reflect the changes to the project.

Next step for Hassbian users

The Hassbian image has always aimed to be the same as a manual Raspbian Lite installation with some packages added. There won’t really be any big changes for all of the users of Hassbian and for documentation, please refer to the Manual installation on a Raspberry PI method.

Alternatives

If you want to continue using something similar, have a look at the manual installation on a Raspberry Pi since it is the base Hassbian was created from. For everyone else, I would wholeheartedly recommend Hass.io since it what I personally use now (It’s what I had hoped Hassbian could have been but better).

Last but not least

Last but not least, thank you to all of those who contributed, in any way, to the Hassbian project and image.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/10/26/rip-hassbian/
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Can I just say thank you to all those who worked on Hassbian - specifically @Landrash, who was the primary driver of this for so long, and @ludeeus.

It’ll be sad to see the official image go away, but the world moves on, and it’s only the Hassbian image that’s going away, not the ability to install Home Assistant on a Raspbian base :smiley:

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Does this affect home-assistant in DietPi ? If it does not Diet-PI is way to go for hassbian user.

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Sorry for my noob question : Are hass.io and hassbian different ? To be sure

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I’m using Hassbian on a Rpi 3b+, booting from usb, SSD.
Is it possible just to install Hass.io and just use my old configuration, and still boot from SSD?

A short guide is appreciated :slightly_smiling_face:

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They’re both different ways of installing Home Assistant

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No, it won’t, because it’s not Hassbian :wink:

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Thx, it was my thought. I only know hass.io and I was a little confused with all way we can install HA.

Sorry for hassbian users and good job to devs

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Shouldn’t “next step for Hassbian users” also include the part about those running Hassbian having their Pis crushed and melted?

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Eh ???
That really is a non sequitur :open_mouth:

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Backup data somewhere

Install Raspbian or Diet Pi.

Install Docker and the prerequisites for running HASSIO on a generic Linux install.

Run the script for the HASSIO generic Linux install.

Drop the backed up config files into /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant/(?)

Restart hassio

Fix any issues that may show up in your log file.

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Just a dumb joke, sorry lol

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I don’t see a reason to why you couldn’t.
There’s nothing separating the configuration of HA on Hassbian against Hass.io

The solution @flamingm0e work on your current install also if you would so prefer since Hassbian is just Raspbian with some extras on-top. Just don’t forget to disable the Homeassistant service preinstalled on Hassbian.

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Another noob question: Am I able to back up all my automation, sensor, input_boolean etc files and my Lovelace configuration files onto my PC, reformat the SD card in my Pi 3, add the Hassio image, and then restore the automation etc files into Hassio?
Thanks for the advice.

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Yes. That’s exactly how it works. Make sure you get the hidden .storage directory as well

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Excellent, thank you @flamingm0e, a fun night lies ahead…

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I will just remind folks thinking Oh no, I must immediately leave Hassbian that you don’t have to. There will be no new Hassbian releases, sure, but until Python 3.9 rolls around, there’s nothing to worry about :wink:

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Nice, I don’t use Hassbian myself, but I do use VENV under Raspbian to run HA.

Will the VENV method of installing and using HA in future still be supported? I know the majority of users, at least on this forum, appear to be on HassIO but I still prefer the VENV method myself.

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Venv will forever be supported. It’s how we do development.

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Great, thanks. :slight_smile: