Ubuntu (silent) support

Feature Requests
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1

Hello,

The time is being…
At the beginning the underlaying OS was well supported on Debian and it perfectly worked with Ubuntu as well. There is no surprise, since debian and ubuntu are cousins…

Suddenly, some annoying restirictions came to the picture, and the ubuntu became a witch and a witch hunt started…

Nowadays, ubuntu usage is still not fully forbidden, but it is not supported and there are signs and extra steps to harden ubuntu users life (tons of unpauseable repair notifications, etc) to deprecate it.

The reason is still inexplicable.
…but as I mentioned, the time is being…

Nowadays (2024, Ubuntu is the most widelly used distro in the market. They regularly provide LTS and prebuilds, function updates, security patches, etc. The community is very strong, and most but not least: it has a great wife acceptance factor…
AAAaaand finally the dry fact: it has more than twice the installations of Debian.

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Source:

Enterprise Apps Today – 3 Feb 24

Linux Statistics 2024 By Market Share, Usage Data, Number Of Users and Facts

Linux Statistics: Linux is the operating system of all the world’s fastest supercomputers. Linux operating systems are a favorite of professional developers

Est. reading time: 9 minutes

Please re-consider the ADR-0014 and add ubuntu and also adjust the OS-agent(supervised) for this purpose.

That would be also OK, if the support is not loud (not advertised) but please don’t bother (and think of the silence support) the ubuntu users.

Please note, that this topic poped-up in WTH category, but this user-voice was out of scope of it and irt was closed immediately (no vote was allowed). - I disagree with it, but the life is heavy. :slight_smile:

2

It is not inexplicable. The reasoning is explained here: architecture/adr/0012-define-supported-installation-method.md at 84da8862a30e6e5ce94f39022ac5f198f74f3438 · home-assistant/architecture · GitHub

Leading to the restrictions defined here: architecture/adr/0014-home-assistant-supervised.md at 84da8862a30e6e5ce94f39022ac5f198f74f3438 · home-assistant/architecture · GitHub

And this is unlikely to change. If anything support for the supervised install method is more likely to be dropped altogether. The developers and support volunteers dislike it and it was only begrudgingly allowed last time support was attempted to be discontinued.

There are far better options available:

  • HA OS
  • HA OS in a VM
  • Container
  • Core
2 Likes
3

Thank you, as I mentioned I’m aware of ADR so it’s clear that now it is not ‘possible’.
Anyways, the change is always possible and motivates the world to be better. :slight_smile: (If-else is always possible in every code. :wink: )

I’ve understand the conveniences from the developer& support volunteer side. But I’ve would also listen the user voice as well (with a vote)
I’m just curious - as a User voice - that is it only requested by me, or is it a common scantiness from the users?

Please note, that the input for the statistics (eg usage by installation type) is a result… Result of the lack other method of installation support. So in here, we should not only focus to supervised installation…
(I’m pretty sure, we have user who changed/forced to change to proxmox/virtualbox->HA OS (or any other alternative legal hack) because ubuntu is not supported, or any other incompatibility reasons, and not by free will…) so thus it is a result and should not be make far-fetched conclusions.
So please don’t narrow down the target only for supervised… I’would make the potential target from the Generic x86-x64 & VirtualMachine users (it is almost 1/3rd of the installations…)

Please be open-minded and don’t used to be like Google/etc. - As I know it’s a community driven tool. :wink:

4

What gave you that idea?

There are copious examples of the community being ignored. Open source means you can look inside - not that you get to decide what goes in.

5 Likes
5

The question will ever be: Why an user like you, who obviously knows its way in Linux, would choose a cumbersome installation method like Supervised rather than any other.
If you run Supervised, you know your way in docker, so why the pain?

Btw, which “annoying restirictions” are you talking about, specifically. When I tried it (some years ago, I must tell), it was just marked “unsupported” without consequences.

1 Like
6

It can be marked unsupported, or unhealthy. Unhealthy means you really screwed something up and it won’t update anything. Unsupported you can do everything, just like you found. Just don’t go to the forums and expect people to help.

7

As for the topic at hand. I’ve ran supervised on ubuntu and debian for a number of years now. Originally, I started on ubuntu with an interface, I quickly found that it was pointless to do so. Then I swapped to headless ubuntu and ran that for about 1 year before the deprecation occurred. Since then, I’ve been running on debian for 5ish years. There is almost no difference between ubuntu headless and debian. I see no reason why anyone should take time to support ubuntu at all. HA isn’t meant to be ran on something that has a user interface. It’s meant to run on a headless OS. All ubuntu will provide is easy access to the docker containers that you’ll likely end up breaking if you modify them.

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8

unfortunatelly, nowadays, not only unsupported, but unhealthy as well… :confused:
…and that’s the real problem…

1 Like
9

unhealthy means you are missing dependencies, or the dependencies are miss-configured. You can run ubuntu in a healthy state unsupported state.

This is the downside of running supervised, you are responsible for dependencies to make HA supervised run properly. Debian can also get in an unhealthy and unsupported state, that will not change if ubuntu is suddenly supported.

2 Likes
10

To clarify things:

HAOS - Home assistnat manages everything.
HA Container - User Manages everything.
HA Core - User Manages everything… outside a container.
HA Supervised - User manages OS, HA manages HA things.

Regardless what OS is supported for Supervised or not, the user is expected to manage all dependencies for the OS to make HA run properly.

Over 5 years, I’ve had to install every dependency change for Debian that has been added as a requirement for HA Supervised. That’s roughly 10 to 20 changes over that period.

If you are not up to that task, supervised is not for you.

11

Unfortunatelly the OS-agent is an essential component of supervised install, in the newer releases and it has some difficulties with the message bus parsing, and that’s why supervised mark the instance as unhealthy. - however, everything works perfectly after some magic, but it is still marked unhealthy…

12

I totally agree, that ubuntu-desktop (with frontend) is useless in our case. but ubuntu-server variant is still oficial ubuntu release for 10-15ish years.

the difference is the gnome frontend and it’s infrastructure (like browser, office, etc) but the core component are common.

There is almost no difference between ubuntu headless and debian

That’s why I do not understand why ubuntu is a witch. :smiley:

13

supporting more operating systems is much harder than you’re making it out to be. That’s why HA only supports HAOS and Debian as the 2 operating systems. You’re asking for 33% more work for all hardware platforms. Debian was chosen specifically because it’s an LTS platform and HA can easily pivot for the OS changes.

1 Like
14

OS-Agent (the low level adaptor) get those massive messagebus updates in 1.3.0 and 1.4.0 release (from 2022). Those updates blocks the OS-agent->supervised installs on ubuntu.
With some magic it is possible to make it work, but the instance will remain unhealthy->you can also discard it with some additional magic. So yes. it is possible but not ‘out of the box’.

Well, I understand the extra effort things.
To make it clear, my request (in generally) is to clarify that the unsupported is not equals with blocked OS.
That’s covered by the ‘silent support’: - Nobody says it is supported, although it is possible because it is not blocked and prepared for other possibilities.

OK I can accept, there is no support on forums (like this thread :D), etc. that’s why it is a feature request/outlook/hint, or I don’t know how should I call this… :slight_smile:

15

Downgrade OS-agent to what is supported.

Ubuntu is not blocked. I will repeat what is causing your problems and why the system is blocking updates:

If you run all requirements for HA supervised, it will be in an unsupported state but healthy.

Your miss configured dependencies are what is blocking you. Not the OS.

If the OS requires dependencies that conflict with HA’s requirements, that’s on you to make it work by either downgrading the dependency or reconfiguring it.

From what it sounds like, it seems like you really just want “OS Agent 1.4.0” to be supported by supervisor.

16

I cannot understand what the advantage of running supervised on ubuntu would be?

In supervised you can’t run anything else on the OS anyway “No additional software, outside of the Home Assistant ecosystem, is installed”. What would be the adantage of running Ubuntu over Debian if you can’t run anything else?

Container will run on Ubuntu. Core will run on Ubuntu. So you don’t have any restrictions from running on Ubuntu.

4 Likes