Re: USB controlled mains switch

Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> wrote:

So far as I've been able to find out, HA is only installed as an image
on the SD card (using the RPI Imager), rather than manually installed on
an existing Pi image (e.g. apt install ...), so that means that the Pi
can only be used for what HA allows you to do.  Therefore, one downside
(for me) with HA is that I don't seem to be able to gain SSH access to
the PI.  I can access it via the web interface, and I can install a ZSH
shell on it, but that is in (I think) a Docker Container.  What I would
like to be able to do, which I can with my other Pis, is to run regular
health check stuff, CPU temp, free memory, free card space that sort of
stuff.  I can do that from the Docker Container, but I can't set up a
cron job to do it, and I haven't even tried getting it to email me a
daily summary.

HA can be installed in several ways.

The normal HAOS install has a series of Docker containers that are
orchestrated by HA, and to do that it uses the whole Pi.  SSH access is to
inside the primary container, rather than the native system.

It's possible to install HA via Docker onto a regular RaspiOS system.  That
means you have access to the outside system, but the downside is that HA
can't manage its own containers.  For example, some plugins come in separate
containers and you'd have to install those by using Docker, rather than
clicking a button in HAOS and have it spin them up itself.

(If you pass through the Docker socket to the primary HA container, it's
possible it can then orchestrate other containers without using HAOS.  I
haven't tried that)

There's also a 'just install HA using Python' method in which case there's
no Docker containers, but that means upgrading is up to you doing it by
hand.  HA changes pretty regularly so that method isn't recommended.

Finally, if you were on x86 you can install HAOS in a VM which is just like
having it take over the whole machine only inside a VM.  You could run a
HAOS image using KVM on a Pi but I'm not sure how smooth that would be.

Theo