unable to access home assistant port 8123, connection refused

Installation
1

HI, New to HA, although familiar to Rpi.
I flashed the Rpi (3) image to 64g micro SD card,
inserted it to the Rpi , connceted the monitor, ethernet and power.
after it quit scrolling, I got the following:
…enu1u1: 192.168.1.126/24
… Version: Home Assistant OS 14.1
… Assistant Core: 2024.12.5
Assistant URL: http://homeassistant.local:8123

Looking at my router DHCP, I see 126 assigned to home assistant
following the next step : entering homeassistant.local:8123 I get the following…

This site can’t be reached

homeassistant.local refused to connect.
Try:

What am I missing?

2

Make sure you have mDNS traffic enabled on the main router of your network. Otherwise try the IP address with the port number and see if that bring up the GUI

3

Try http://192.168.1.126:8123

Also what do you get when you ping homeassistant.local
Also ping 192.168.1.126 should give the same results.

You are using Ethernet, aren’t you?

4

Yes I am using ethernet, I have pinged both .local and .1.126 successfully and have tried http://192.168.1.126:813 with no joy.

5

from with little I know, it appears that the 192.168.126:8123 is being refused, the 192.168.1.126:4357 (observer port) works fine, so the Rpi is connected to the internet. Obviously. I am not seeing something.

6

Since you have access to the cli, you can check the logs and network settings:

Common tasks - Operating System - Home Assistant.

7

I have to find a keyboard and mouse that is not in use (I don’t dare to ‘borrow’ my spouse’s), but yeah, I guess that my next move (I’m reusing parts and pieces from other/old projects)…

8

This is the command to get the network info

ha net info

Note: corrected as mentioned by @stevemann

9

Hi John, welcome to the forum!

Just a side note: using a RPi 3 is really on the edge.
I love RPi’s (have 6 running for various tasks) but for HA it will work although you cannot expect to much of it.
You might hit the RAM limit very soon…

10

It is
ha net info
You should see a lot of info there, but look for the ipv4: section:

interfaces:
- connected: true
  enabled: true
  interface: eno1
  ipv4:
    address:
    - 192.168.1.57/24
    gateway: 192.168.1.1
    method: auto
    nameservers:
    - 1.1.1.1
    - 9.9.9.9
    ready: true
11

(borrowed my spouse’s keyboard), ran net info, got IPV4 section,
interfaces:
…
… nameservers:
ready: true

looks like I don’t have nameservers…

12

I looked at wrong section
method: auto
nameservers:
192.168.1.1
ready: true

13

Assuming that was a typo? The address should be 192.168.1.126:8123

Also a typo? Should be http://192.168.1.126:8123

On my system I need to wait a few minutes from the time the Observer page shows everything is healthy until I can actually connect to the ip:8123 page. I’ve also seen where the Observer page shows everything is online, but a rogue Add-On or Integration is making Home Assistant so busy that I don’t get any response from the :8123 web page. I wouldn’t expect that from a newly installed instance though. Unless the RPi3 just can’t handle it.

14

I do understand about Rpi (3) being on the very trailing edge for Home Assistant, but was HOPING it would work.
I and running some home assistant commands (core check) and it is just sitting there ‘processing’
so I am going to let it run for a while and may have to buy a new Rpi (5?) and try again…
Thank you all for you inputs and I will revisit this with a new Rpi.

15

The Observer web server and HA are separate docker containers. From all the information you’ve posted your problem doesn’t seem to be network related, it’s a problem with starting the Home Assistant docker container.

at the cli you can enter login, then enter, then docker ps to see what docker containers are running. Since it’s a new install it shouldn’t be a long list.

16

Yes, the Pi3 may be your limiting component.

My recomendation:
Buy a used MicroPC on eBay, something like the Intel NUC i3. It will cost less than a new Raspberry Pi5, power supply and case. And the NUC will outperform any Pi.

Flash the HAOS x-86 image to the PC boot device.

Done.

You don’t need Docker, ProxMox or VM. They are not required to run Home Assistant.

17

HA runs fine on an RPi 3B+. No, you won’t be able to load it up with tons of high-performance stuff like video and audio streaming, but that’s not the problem here. Honestly I don’t know what is, but there have been some good suggestions above. At this point I’d start over and re-install the image on the SD card, making sure not to miss any steps. Especially anything network related. Wired or WiFi? Don’t try to do both.

18

Update…
After some thought (something I’m not use to these days), I reflashed the HAOS over the previous and booted… Success! now to explore HA and get my google home devices over to HA.
Thanks to all! you have been VERY helpful.