Raspberry Pi Install problem

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

My HA install went wonky, so I decided to do a fresh install - Straight Raspberry Pi using the Raspberry Pi imaging tool, selecting the Home Assistant OS. Loaded it to an SD card and popped it into my Pi. It throws an error that I have no idea how to fix:

2026-04-15 13:50:56.911 ERROR (MainThread) [supervisor.docker.manager] failed to extract layer (application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar+zstd sha256:873581ab26511a9d82f5ffea64fe7deb37a19c5692d789862b809fa569dad48d) to overlayfs as “extract-889709374-fp4C sha256:7f53bd8f896f0a10aa155bdeb2a42a4b8c5f94b75dae8693c82d76c2acbc4d7c”: archive/tar: invalid tar header

I have tried re-downloading the imager, different SD cards and it always does this, and then will not load, just cycling on this forever:

2026-04-15 13:55:36.581 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.homeassistant.core] Home Assistant Core installation in progress

2026-04-15 13:55:51.586 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.homeassistant.core] Home Assistant Core installation in progress

2026-04-15 13:56:06.591 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.homeassistant.core] Home Assistant Core installation in progress

How do I fix this???

2

What model PI?
Why NOT to buy a PI to run Home Assistant

3

How long have you waited? It takes a while for it to show up on the network and show signs of actually functioning correctly.

4

It’s a Pi5

5

I have waited for hours - it’s on the network, as this is how I see the logs - from the Preparing Home Assistant screen.

6

I’m running a Pi5 with NVMe. I tested a backup recently with an old SD card and it threw some faults and was very slow. It was more down to the SD card. Some friendly advice, an SD card might not last long. i only get 3/4 months out of mine before it was corrupted. Its the reason i moved to NVMe - i learnt the hard way.

1 Like
7

Also having this same error. Have reinstalled onto the SD card twice, and waited over an hour to see if the error recovers, but no luck.

Running a Pi 4 with SanDisk SD Card. Home Assistant OS version 17.2. Docker version 29.3.1

Is there a way to force docker to update, or is there a way around it by installing an older version of HAOS?

8

I get that the RPi 5 is small, but for actually less money, especially after case and power supply, a refurbished pc is better value. I have HA running in a Virtual Box under Ubuntu. I have three USB dongles. I see that the RPi recommended power supply is 25W. My installation is pulling 18W. Plus I have the other programs running like SIP (Sustainable Irrigation Platform) a very nice irrigation front end. Also, a UDP translator for extracting the data from my very old solar inverter.

In three years I haven’t had any hardware problems that I didn’t cause.

9

Fixed this by installing Home Assistant v16.3, then updating to 17.2 from the 16.3 browser interface.

Detailed steps:

  1. Download v16.3 from https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/16.3/haos_rpi4-64-16.3.img.xz
  2. Extract the .img file from the compressed .xz file you just downloaded
  3. Using Raspberry Pi Imager, insert your SD card and select install a custom image, and choose the HAOS 16.3.img
  4. Once the image is written, put the SD card into your Raspberry Pi and boot it up
  5. Note the local IP address of your installation (format should be similar to 192.168.0.xxx - ignore the /xx at the end), and check the version is 16.3
  6. Open a browser window and navigate to the IP address, with :8123 on the end. Or, you can use http://homeassistant.local:8123
  7. This was an important step for me - ensure the download of the core HA files is not interrupted, by displaying the logs in your browser window. I had to try this 3 times before the files were downloaded correctly, and then I finally saw the welcome screen
  8. Follow the instructions to create an account, and then you should see a notification in the HAOS dashboard that you can update to the latest version.

Hope this helps