Using Live Image of ZorinOS/Ubuntu/Linux Mint to Create Home Assistant OS boot drive - for x86 machines

home-assistant-x86-install.md

Installing the official Home Assistant OS on an old x86 PC.

This is not a support document. Not responsible for whomever might use this. This put down for my personal use and if anyone else wants to use it they can, but this process will remove any data from the target device they are installing on.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Intel or AMD x86 PC, monitor, keyboard, internet connection via ethernet.
• Bootable USB thumb drive of the latest dekstop version of ZorinOS, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint

1. Boot your machine with the bootable Zorin OS and select Try Zorin OS (you do NOT want to install it)

2. Inside of the Zorin OS Live Image (Try Zorin OS), open up the Terminal application and type in the following...

   sudo -i	

3. We now want to look at the partitions and file systems on the machine.

   lsblk 

   if you have a regular hard drive or ssd, it will most likely show up as /dev/disk0 or if you have eMMC drive it will show up as /dev/mmcblk0

   and if it is a usb drive it will most likely show up as /dev/sdb or something along those lines

4. Now you will want to make sure the drive is umounted. If you have a /dev/disk0 it would look like this to unmount...

   umount /dev/disk0*

   Or if you have something like /dev/mmcblk0, it would be this to unmount...

   umount /dev/mmcblk0*

5. Now, we want to download the official Home Assistant OS image for x86 machines. Go to the Home Assistant documentation for Generic x86-64 install, https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/generic-x86-64 and wget the URL for the Generic x86-64 image.

   wget https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/7.0/haos_generic-x86-64-7.0.img.xz

   and then uncompress this image...

   xz -d haos_generic-x86-64-7.0.img.xz

6. Now we want to write this image to our drive.
   [NOTE: This will REMOVE everything from the target boot disk and replace it with the Home Assistant OS]

   if you have /dev/disk0, use this...

   dd if=haos_generic-x86-64-7.0.img of=/dev/disk0 bs=32M status=progress

   or if you have eMMC, and you have this /dev/mmcblk0, use this...

   dd if=haos_generic-x86-64-7.0.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=32M status=progress

   Sit back a few minutes and let the process complete.

7. When this process is complete, go ahead and close out of the terminal. And then shut down the Zorin OS Live environment. Once it is shut down, remove the installation media (usb install thumb drive).

8. Once the usb drive is removed. Power on the computer and it should take a minute or two in its first boot up process before the Home Assistant CLI (command line interface) show up. As soon as the Home Assistant CLI is available and ready to use it will generate a IP address for your machine and show you how you can access it. Once you get that pull up that URL on another device and then either RESTORE your existing Home Assistant backup or go ahead go through the process of setting up a new instance of Home Assistant.