The first step is to install Home Assistant. We recommend a dedicated system to run Home Assistant. If you are unsure of what to choose, follow the Raspberry Pi guide to install Home Assistant Operating System. Home Assistant offers four different installation methods. We recommend using one of the following two methods: There are two alternative installation methods available for experienced users: The list below shows the installation method available based on the device and platform being used. If you are using the Home Assistant Blue, the Home Assistant Operating System is already installed. Continue to onboarding. Suggest an edit to this
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1: Backups for Home Assistant Core and Home Assistant Container is provided by the OSContainerCoreSupervised Automations
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VirtualBox [.vdi] KVM [.qcow2] Vmware Workstation [.vmdk] Follow this guide if you already are running a supported virtual machine hypervisor. If you are not familiar with virtual machines we recommend installation Home Assistant OS directly on a Raspberry Pi or an
ODROID. Load the appliance image into your virtual machine hypervisor. [Note: You are free to assign as much resources as you wish to the VM, please assign enough based on your add-on needs]. Minimum recommended assignments: All these can be extended if your usage calls for more resources. VirtualBox KVM [virt-manager] KVM [virt-install] Vmware Workstation Please keep in mind that the bridged adapter only functions over a hardwired ethernet connection. Using Wi-Fi on your VirtualBox host is unsupported. 6. Then go to "Audio" and choose "Intel HD Audio" as Audio Controller. By default VirtualBox does not free up unused disk space. To automatically shrink the vdi disk image the Install Home Assistant Operating System
Download the appropriate image
Create the Virtual Machine
Hypervisor specific configuration
discard
option must be enabled:VBoxManage storageattach --storagectl "SATA" --port 0 --device 0 --nonrotational on --discard on
- Create a new virtual machine in
virt-manager
- Select “Import existing disk image”, provide the path to the QCOW2 image above
- Choose “Generic Default” for the operating system
- Check the box for “Customize configuration before install”
- Select your bridge under “Network Selection”
- Under customization select “Overview” -> “Firmware” -> “UEFI x86_64: …”. Make sure to select a non-secureboot
version of OVMF [does not contain the word
secure
,secboot
, etc.], e.g.,/usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.fd
. - Click “Add Hardware” [bottom left], and select “Channel”
- Select device type: “unix”
- Select name: “org.qemu.guest_agent.0”
- Finally select “Begin Installation” [upper left corner]
virt-install --name hass --description "Home Assistant OS" --os-variant=generic --ram=2048 --vcpus=2 --disk ,bus=sata --graphics none --boot uefi
- Create a new virtual machine
- Select “Custom”, make it compatible with the default of Workstation and ESX
- Choose “I will install the operating system later”, select “Linux” -> “Other Linux 5.x or later kernel 64-bit”
- Select “Use Bridged Networking”
- Select “Use an existing virtual disk” and select the VMDK file above,
After creation of VM go to “Settings” and “Options” then “Advanced” and select “Firmware type” to “UEFI”.
Start up your Virtual Machine
- Start the Virtual Machine
- Observe the boot process of Home Assistant Operating System
- Once completed you will be able to reach Home Assistant on homeassistant.local:8123. If you are running an older Windows
version or have a stricter network configuration, you might need to access Home Assistant at homeassistant:8123 or
//X.X.X.X:8123
[replace X.X.X.X with your ’s IP address].
With the Home Assistant Operating System installed and accessible you can continue with onboarding.
Install Home Assistant Container
These below instructions are for an installation of Home Assistant Container running in your own container environment, which you manage yourself. Any OCI compatible runtime can be used, however this guide will focus on installing it with Docker.
Prerequisites
This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and a container runtime installed [like Docker].
If you are using Docker then you need to be on at least version 19.03.9, ideally an even higher version, and libseccomp
2.4.2 or newer.
Platform Installation
Installation with Docker is straightforward. Adjust the following command so that:
/PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG
points at the folder where you want to store your configuration and run it.MY_TIME_ZONE
is a tz database name, likeTZ=America/Los_Angeles
.Install
Update
docker run -d \ --name homeassistant \ --privileged \ --restart=unless-stopped \ -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \ -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \ --network=host \ ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
# if this returns "Image is up to date" then you can stop here docker pull ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
# stop the running container docker stop homeassistant
# remove it from Docker's list of containers docker rm homeassistant
# finally, start a new one docker run -d \ --name homeassistant \ --restart=unless-stopped \ --privileged \ -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \ -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \ --network=host \ ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
Once the Home Assistant Container is running Home Assistant should be accessible using
//:8123
[replace with the hostname or IP of the system]. You can continue with onboarding.Restart Home Assistant
If you change the configuration you have to restart the server. To do that you have 3 options.
- In your Home Assistant UI go to the Settings -> System and click the “Restart” button.
- You can go to the Developer Tools -> Services, select the
service
homeassistant.restart
and click “Call Service”. - Restart it from a terminal.
Docker CLI
Docker Compose
docker restart homeassistant
Docker Compose
As the Docker command becomes more complex, switching to
docker compose
can be preferable and support automatically restarting on failure or system restart. Create acompose.yml
file:version: '3' services: homeassistant: container_name: homeassistant image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable" volumes: - /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro restart: unless-stopped privileged: true network_mode: host
Start it by running:
Once the Home Assistant Container is running Home Assistant should be accessible using
//:8123
[replace with the hostname or IP of the system]. You can continue with onboarding.Exposing Devices
In order to use Z-Wave, Zigbee or other integrations that require access to devices, you need to map the appropriate device into the container. Ensure the user that is running the container has the correct privileges to access the
/dev/tty*
file, then add the device mapping to your container instructions:Docker CLI
Docker Compose
docker run ... --device /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 ...
version: '3' services: homeassistant: ... devices: - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0
Optimizations
The Home Assistant Container is using an alternative memory allocation library jemalloc for better memory management and Python runtime speedup.
As jemalloc can cause issues on certain hardware, it can be disabled by passing the environment variable
DISABLE_JEMALLOC
with any value, for example:Docker CLI
Docker Compose
docker run ... -e "DISABLE_JEMALLOC=true" ...
version: '3' services: homeassistant: ... environment: - DISABLE_JEMALLOC: true
The error message
: Unsupported system page size
is one known indicator.Install Home Assistant Core
This is an advanced installation process, and some steps might differ on your system. Considering the nature of this installation type, we assume you can handle subtle differences between this document and the system configuration you are using. When in doubt, please consider one of the other installation methods, as they might be a better fit instead.
Prerequisites
This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and have installed Python 3.9 [including the package
python3-dev
] or newer.Install dependencies
Before you start, make sure your system is fully updated, all packages in this guide are installed with
apt
, if your OS does not have that, look for alternatives.sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade -y
Install the dependencies:
sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip bluez libffi-dev libssl-dev libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf build-essential libopenjp2-7 libtiff5 libturbojpeg0-dev tzdata
The above-listed dependencies might differ or missing, depending on your system or personal use of Home Assistant.
Create an account
Add an account for Home Assistant Core called
homeassistant
. Since this account is only for running Home Assistant Core the extra arguments of-rm
is added to create a system account and create a home directory.sudo useradd -rm homeassistant
Create the virtual environment
First we will create a directory for the installation of Home Assistant Core and change the owner to the
homeassistant
account.sudo mkdir /srv/homeassistant sudo chown homeassistant:homeassistant /srv/homeassistant
Next up is to create and change to a virtual environment for Home Assistant Core. This will be done as the
homeassistant
account.sudo -u homeassistant -H -s cd /srv/homeassistant python3 -m venv . source bin/activate
Once you have activated the virtual environment [notice the prompt change to
[homeassistant] [email protected]:/srv/homeassistant $
] you will need to run the following command to install a required Python package.python3 -m pip install wheel
Once you have installed the required Python package, it is now time to install Home Assistant Core!
pip3 install homeassistant
Start Home Assistant Core for the first time. This will complete the installation for you, automatically creating the
.homeassistant
configuration directory in the/home/homeassistant
directory, and installing any basic dependencies.You can now reach your installation via the web interface on
//homeassistant.local:8123
.If this address doesn’t work you may also try
//localhost:8123
or//X.X.X.X:8123
[replace X.X.X.X with your machines’ IP address].When you run the
hass
command for the first time, it will download, install and cache the necessary libraries/dependencies. This procedure may take anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes. During that time, you may get “site cannot be reached” error when accessing the web interface. This will only happen for the first time, and subsequent restarts will be much faster.Install Home Assistant Supervised
This way of running Home Assistant will require the most of you. It also has strict requirements you need to follow.
Unless you really need this installation type, you should install Home Assistant OS [this can also be a virtual machine], or Home Assistant Container.
- First make sure you understand the requirements.
- This installation method has very strict requirements, for example, it only supports Debian [and Ubuntu, Armbian, Raspberry Pi OS are not supported]. So, make sure you understand the requirements from step 1 above.
- Then head over to home-assistant/supervised-installer to set it up.
Once the Home Assistant Supervised installation is running and Home Assistant accessible you can continue with onboarding.
Help us to improve our documentation
Suggest an edit to this page, or provide/view feedback for this page.