This guide will help you to install Home Assistant Supervised, on almost any machine type you choose. This guide has been tested on machines including a Lenovo m72e, Dell Optiplex SFF 990 and Dell Optiplex USFF 780.
In this guide, you will be using Debian 10.04 as the operating system. This type of installation is what is called “headless” and after the installation is complete, you will not need to have a keyboard, mouse or monitor attached (although you can if you prefer). You will manage and update the machine via terminal commands.
What is Home Assistant Supervised?
Home Assistant is a full UI managed home automation ecosystem that runs Home Assistant Core, the Home Assistant Supervisor and add-ons. It comes pre-installed on Home Assistant OS, but can be installed on any Linux system. It leverages Docker, which is managed by the Home Assistant Supervisor plus the added benefit of dozens of add-ons (think app store) that work natively inside the Home Assistant environment.
If you are new to Home Assistant, you can now proceed to Step 1. If you have an existing Home Assistant installation and need to know how to back up your current configuration, please see the document Backing up and Restoring your configuration located HERE
1.1) Start by downloading debian-live-10.4.0-amd64-standard.iso.torrent from HERE. This is a torrent file, so use your favourite torrent program.
1.2) While Debian is downloading, you will need some other programs to help with the setup and installation. To burn the Debian ISO image to a USB thumb drive, you will use a program called Rufus which can be downloaded from HERE. You will also use a piece of software called PuTTY, available HERE.
Putty is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. You will use Putty to execute commands on the Debian machine from your Windows PC. (Use Terminal on a Mac).
1.3) You will now create a bootable USB drive using Rufus and the Debian image you have downloaded. Insert a blank USB drive of at least 8gb into your PC, open Rufus and choose your USB from the drop-down menu. Now select the Debian ISO image you downloaded, and click Start. If you get any prompts, select OK or Yes to continue. When this has completed, you can move on.
1.4) Insert the USB you have just made into the new machine, connect a monitor, Ethernet cable, keyboard and mouse, and power on the machine. You will need to select the USB drive as the boot device, to do this, you will need to press something like F12 or DEL on your keyboard immediately when the machine is powered on.
1.5) The first screen you should be able to select from is Main Menu, on this screen, select Graphical Debian Installer
1.6) Next will be Language. Choose your language and click continue.
1.7) Next will be Select your location. Choose your country and click continue.
1.8) Next will be Configure the keyboard. Select your keyboard type and click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks which will take 1-2 minutes.
1.9) Next will be Configure the network. Here you can name your machine, the default name will be debian. Choose a name and click continue. You can skip the next page by clicking continue as you do not need to set a domain name.
1.10) Next will be Set up users and passwords. You will be asked to create a password for the root user. Make a note of the password you choose here, and click continue.
1.11) Next will be Set up users and passwords again. Enter a username, click continue and on the next screen, enter a password for this user account. Make note of both of these, you will need them later.
1.12) Next will be Configure the clock. Select the correct time zone and click continue.
1.13) Next will be Partition Disks. Select Guided - use entire disk and then click continue. On the next screen make sure the correct disk is selected and click continue. On the next screen select All files in one partition and click continue. On the next screen, make sure Finish partitioning and write changes to disk is selected, and click continue. On the next screen, select Yes and then click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks. This will take 1-2 mins.
1.14) Next will be Configure the package manager. Select No and click continue. Select your Country and click continue. You can leave the default selection deb.debian.org selected and click continue. Leave the next page blank and click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks. This will take a few minutes.
1.15) Next will be Install the GRUB bootloader. Select Yes and click continue. Now select the drive you are installing Debian on, and click continue. The installer will now perform some automated tasks. This will take 1-2 mins and then installation will be complete.
1.16) On Debian your user will not be a member of the sudo group so cannot run administrative commands. After the system has rebooted, log in as the root user and the password you set during Step 1.10. To add your user to the sudo group enter this command, and press Enter.
usermod -aG sudo username
where username is the one you setup during Step 1.11
1.17) Log out of the root account by pressing ctrl-d on your keyboard then to login to the machine using the username and password you created in Step 1.11.
1.18) Before you can connect to the machine via SSH from another PC, you will need to update the operating system and install the OpenSSH-Server. Enter these commands one at a time, and press enter.
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo apt install openssh-server -y
1.19) Once this has completed, you will need to find the IP address of the machine. You can do this by checking your router, or by typing this command into the terminal.
ip a
You should now see some information on your screen showing network configuration. You are looking for information like inet 192.168.1.150/24, or, inet 10.1.1.50/24 depending on your network setup. This is the IP of the machine and you can now use this to connect to the machine from another PC.
Now that you have Debian installed, you can move on to installing Home Assistant Supervised.
2.1) First you will start by updating Debian to make sure all the latest updates and security patches are installed. To do this you will use Putty to connect via SSH and copy and paste some commands. To connect to the Debian machine via Putty, you will need the IP of the machine from Step 1.19, and the username and password you created from Step 1.12.
Open Putty and in the HOST NAME (OR IP ADDRESS) box, enter the IP of the Debian machine, then select OPEN. You will now be prompted to enter your username (login as:) and password. Now that you have logged in, copy the following command and paste into Putty window by right clicking your mouse button. You may be asked to re-enter your password.
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y
Depending on the speed of your internet connection, this could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes to complete. When finished, you will see the prompt.
2.2) Now the operating system is up to date, you can install Home Assistant Supervised. Copy each line of the below commands one at a time and paste them into the Putty window, and press ENTER. One of the following commands will execute a shell script as root, and some people may be concerned with the security risk. If you would like to read the script for piece of mind, click HERE
sudo -i
apt-get install -y software-properties-common apparmor-utils apt-transport-https avahi-daemon ca-certificates curl dbus jq network-manager socat
systemctl disable ModemManager
systemctl stop ModemManager
curl -fsSL get.docker.com | sh
curl -sL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kanga-Who/home-assistant/master/supervised-installer.sh" | bash -s
2.3) On a PC or NUC the installation time is generally under 5 mins, however it can take longer so be patient. You can check the progress of Home Assistant setup by connecting to the IP address of your machine in Chrome/Firefox on port 8123. (e.g. http://192.168.1.150:8123)
Once you can see the login screen, the setup has been completed and you can set up an account name and password. If you are new to Home Assistant you can now configure any smart devices that Home Assistant has automatically discovered on your network. If you have an existing Home Assistant install and you have a snapshot or YAML files you wish to restore, refer to the document Backing up and Restoring your configuration.
That’s it, you have now installed Home Assistant Supervised on your Debian machine and have SSH access to your machine to keep it up to date. It is recommended that you log into your machine using Putty at least once a month and use the following command to download security patches and keep the OS up to date.
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove –y
Along with this guide, there is also associated documents available. These are essentially guides I use myself.
I welcome feedback on this guide, please feel free to tag me or PM if you have suggestions on how to make improvements.
Thank you to nickrout for testing, feedback and edits to help improve this guide.