Run both HAOS and UI at the same device X86-64 hardware

marpo · January 18, 2023, 9:35am

Hello, this is my first interaction with the Home Assistant and I’m trying to install and make it working for the first time.

My idea is to use one device to run both the server as well as the user interface to see the Dashboard.

I found the instructions for Generic x86-64 to install HAOS on the dedicated x86 PC and to install Home Assistant Container (Generic x86-64 - Home Assistant).

I just wanted to check if I understand it well and whether I will achieve my goal by these steps - to utilize one device for server as well as the graphical user interface (I believe I will need Docker too, not only Container).

Can I somehow add and run on the same device the Docker too?

Thank you in advance for your help with these newbies questions.

CChris · January 18, 2023, 9:41am

the frontend is part of the HomeAssistant installation.
There aren’t different software packages.

If you have already installed HomeAssistant OS (HAOS) - you should be able to login to the system with SSH…
There, you should see the following information:
grafik

Just try to connect the IP of your HA installation with the port: 8123 in your browser and you should get your Dashboard / UI of HomeAssistant.

bkbartk · January 18, 2023, 9:45am

the front-end basically is a webpage which you could connect with using any browser or the HA app.
If you run a vm or a docker you could of course open this webpage on the same machine HAOS is running on. If you attach a screen.

But probably you won’t use this dashboard on the server itself and always grep your phone when using HA.

marpo · January 18, 2023, 9:47am

Thanks, that’s the point - can I run the browser on this device where HAOS is running and showing the command line screen?

Actually I was hoping to be able to have just 1 device for both the server and the dashboard.

CChris · January 18, 2023, 9:56am

you can probably use one of the SSH Addons
grafik

le_top · January 18, 2023, 10:55am

Considering that the host is running some *nix image, you woul d need to have a XServer running on the host system and then have a browser running somewhere using that XServer as the display.

HAOS does not provide an XServer and it does not seem possible to define a Docker container that would kind of “grap” the graphical card to manage its display output entirely - at least I did not find a solution to that. It is possible to give a Docker container access to GPU resources (search term: “docker gpu”).

So you would have to install a system providing an XServer Natively and then install Homa Assistent on top of that, either through virtualisation or containerisation.

You then likely want to have a browser run in Kiosk mode (hide the browser’s menus, not HA’s menus).

This forum has instruction on how to install HA using pip on a Raspberry Pi for Kiosk mode. Personnally I do not recommand installing HA Core (use PIP on the native system) - it’s harder to maintain.

If I were to try and do this, I would likely install Proxmox, and add an XServer to it. Then install HAOS in a container - there are even installation scripts for getting HAOS in a VM or container on proxmox referenced in this installation guide on ow to setup HA on proxmox.
Once that is done, you need to setup the native system (where proxmox is running) to open a browser in kiosk mode (i.e. full screen, ensore that it is restarted every time it fails).