I’ve just accidentally killed my remote Supervised HA installation (was on Buster, I was struggling to get it to accept that I had systemd installed and fully functional, I ran a few updates and during that time something failed and locked me out of root). So. I could fix it when I’m next there, or I could go for a HAOS installation. I’m not sure which to do.
The reason I went with the supervised install was because I couldn’t add in a few items like HACS and other integrations without it way back in ~2020, as far as I remember, but also because I do run other things on the same Pi4 - other scripts primarily, and an OpenVPN server to let me have home network access when away.
If I choose to use HAOS, what level of control/capability in the main OS do I lose for the sake of having the supported installation?
It wasn’t HACS. That integration can be installed no matter which installation method you use.
HA supervised is only supported on Debian and no derivatives (e.g. Buster is not supported). Also a supervised install requires that you run home assistant exclusively. No other programs should be installed. it really is not a good choice.
You basically have no access to the OS with HAOS. The OS is managed for you. All additional applications must be run through add-ons.
A docker install allows you to run other docker containers instead of add-ons. You are responsible for maintaining the OS.
How about installing HAOS in a VM and running up another VM (or VMs) for your other software?
HAOS would manage the OS for your Home Assistant install but you would be responsible for maintaining other VM OS’s.
All installation methods have access to all core and third party integrations.
I switched from Supervised to HAOS when I converted from Mac running VirtualBox/Debian to x64 running ProxMox/HAOS. Everything is smoother. More reliable, easier to maintain, quicker. The change was almost seamless.
I also switched to x86/Proxmox and I’m very happy with it. Especially if you want to use the HW for additional things besides of HA. Another benefit is the snapshot and backup feature of Proxmox. Take a snapshot, change things and if something goes wrong rollback the snapshot in a few seconds. Done. I have HAOS, esphome, uptime kuma, code server and compreface running in VMs and LXCs on a mini pc with 4 cores and 16GB RAM and it runs like a charm.
How much RAM does your pi4 have? If it’s less than 4gb than virtualization is not a good idea. Even with 4gb it’s tough. HA alone should have access to 4GB so that it runs smooth. Does it have to be a pi4?
I hadn’t thought about virtualising it - that’s a very good point.
It doesn’t have to be a Pi4 - and I certainly can’t remember whether I got the 4Gb or 8Gb version - maybe the better route would be to find more logical hardware with the option for an actual hard drive instead of SD card.
I’ll have a look into those options, thanks for opening my eyes further everyone!
Well I now have a proxmox node set up running HAOS and an ubuntu VM separately. Unfotunately I’m now finding a bunch of problems with the current HAOS version that I can’t fix because I have no control over the OS
