From the store page, I know there was some potential to marry off princesses and such. I don’t know if that’s necessarily romantic, but it could be.
Review
This is one of those games where player choices matter. A lot. Like from the very first decision point, you can lose the game. I know because I tried it! That said, it’s not a roguelike. After playing for an hour, I decided of out nowhere to restart. I wasn’t doing poorly, but I was curious if the NPCs or story would change. It didn’t. I was presented with the exact same NPCs and their quests. Making the same decision, the result was the same.
Importantly, it’s rarely clear how a decision will shake out. If I give a peasant some of the limited gold from the treasury to build an inn, what do I get out of it? What does the kingdom gain? Will he actually build the inn? Even if he does, it’s possible it might not even profitable. Which would be a waste of precious gold. Saving a lost child might improve relations with the people of my kingdom. But is it worth tying up my general for two turns? What if I need him for something else more important? It’s hard to say.
Quite a view from the castle wall. Would be a shame if something happened to it…
So decisions are often made blindly. Which is how it sometimes is in real life. I’m the ruler here. The king. I’m “paid” to make the decisions for everyone. And my decisions affect everyone. One wrong move and the enemy may be at the castle gates!
There is some resource management here, too. I mentioned the limited gold treasury, but there’s also farmed goods, soldiers, the people’s happiness, and even carrier pigeons, that have to be managed. Same goes will allies. I may have an ally, but that doesn’t mean the ally is helping for free. What does the ally want? Money? Perhaps my daughter’s hand in marriage? Will my ally help at all?
Verdict
I enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be a slow start, but honestly, it ramps up pretty quickly. I felt the tension and worry from my decisions. Did I make the right choice? I sure hoped so.
Will I come back to this game? Not sure. Sounds weird right? I said I enjoyed it. But there’s a reason I play a lot of JRPGs, which are known for their linearity. I often like being told a story as opposed to participating in the story. I never really liked those “choose your own adventure” books as a kid. And that’s exactly what this is. We’ll see.
Release: February 2016 on iOS / August 4, 2020 on Steam
Purchased: December 28, 2020
Discounted at Purchase? Yes, 35% off
Bingo Category: “Has an Isometric Perspective”
Time played: 1hr
Why this game?
Easy: It’s got an isometric, voxel style perspective and style.
Review
I’ve played plenty of the Civilization games, as well as RTSs like Rise of Nations. I wasn’t entirely sure if Polytopia was a turn-based or RTS. Turns out, it’s turn-based.
My nascent empire.
Which means that this is essentially a distilled and simplified Civilization! Cool. The default or main game mode is called “Perfection.” You have 30 turns to get as high as score as possible. And that’s done by growing your cities, claiming territory and cities, researching tech, fighting other NPC empires, and exploring. I like that in this mode there’s an ending. That’s always an issue in Civ games, where the games just go on forever. I think I’ve finished maybe two or three games when I’ve played Civ. And I played a lot of Civ 4 and Civ 5 in college.
Since Polytopia not nearly as complex as Civilization, with not nearly as much going on, processing all the turns is quick. My 30-turn play was done in about an hour. It probably would’ve taken longer if I’d had taken the time to read everything. Like the technology in the tech tree, to really understand what the benefits are. Conversely, I imagine once I know all the tech, it’ll go way faster.
The simplified tech tree.
There are two other modes: a no-turn limit mode and a creative mode. I’ve yet to try either.
Verdict
I like it. Its very mobile game-esque. Which is great, since it is also on mobile (I played it via Steam on PC). I could totally see playing this at work on break or lunch on my phone. Or maybe at an airport, waiting to board. It’s straightforward, doesn’t require a lot of deep understanding, and quick.
I’d definitely play this again, if I’m in the mood for Civ, but without having to sacrifice tons of time.
I’m not actually that sure this is a “solo-dev project.” Some quick Googling made it seem that it may have started as one. However, looking into it a little more, I get the feeling there is/was a small team who made this game. Oops. Oh well, it was still in the backlog. Still played it.
Review
I grew up in the 90s playing or watching my older cousins play point and click adventure games. Day of the Tentacle. Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. Sam and Max Hit the Road, which is definitely a classic. Even some Leisure Suit Larry, even though I was probably too young! Plus other Sierra adventure games.
So when I saw Odysseus Kosmos some years back, I got hit with that nostalgia bomb. It’s not like I haven’t played any adventures games since then. I’ve played pretty much all the Monkey Island games, including more recent ones. And some of the Tell Tale Sam and Max entries. But these somewhat recent games didn’t have that aesthetic from the 90s. They’re all 3D. On the flipside, Odysseus Kosmos seem to have it that 90s look in spades. Just look at it!
Graphics obviously better than the 90s. I can actually see a face on the robot!
I played nearly 2.5hrs. This included the “pilot episode,” which is basically a demo. I’m only in episode 1 of 5. So, as usual, not terribly far. But one of the things I liked right off the bat are the puzzles. Namely that they’re relatively straightforward. For example, in the screenshot above, there’s an intercom speaker in the top left. When I clicked on it, I was informed a screwdriver was also stuck on it, which you can’t really see. No clue how it got there. But I know I needed it. On the computer terminal on the desk, I noticed there was a volume control for the intercom. Oh! What if I turn the volume all the way up and use the intercom? It should send some serious vibrations, maybe enough to shake the screwdriver loose. Gave it a try and it worked!
I’ve played some other point and clicks where the solutions were just too esoteric. To me, the biggest offender of that is Grim Fandango. By the end, I had to use a walkthrough to finish the game. The item combos and what they should be used on made no sense. Without a guide, I would’ve never figured out some of those. Unless I was just randomly clicking and trying each and every combo out. It wasn’t fun.
Now being in the beginning of the game, hard to say if this will hold true. I’m sure it gets harder. But hopefully not too much.
One of downsides, which I should’ve expected, is the dialog. P&C adventure games often have a lot of dialog. Corny and slapstick-y. But I feel like here the game is trying just a bit too hard. Obviously not all dialog will be LOL funny. But a lot of it here I’m just like, “OK, just stop talking, I need to figure out this puzzle.
Verdict
I think I’ll come back to this game. It’s not a game I’ll necessarily play through in long sittings. Though I could absolutely see myself playing for an hour or so, then coming back to it a few days later. It seems like a solid, modern adventure game.
And for as cheap as it was—think I paid $4.99 for it—it’s basically a steal. If the goal is $1/hr, one could easily get at least 10hrs out of it. Especially since there are five episodes total.
I knew from the Steam Store page, that Signalis is in the same vein as Resident Evil. I haven’t played a lot of any Resident Evil game, but I’ve played just enough to know there are puzzles and combat.
Review
A couple of the Steam user tags on this game are, “Survival Horror” and “Psychological Horror.” These are not games I typically play. Because I’m a huge scaredy-cat. I don’t mind watching others play horror games. I’ve watched plenty of Markiplier and Dan & Phil play “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and similar. But I don’t like being in the driver’s seat for horror games. The horror games I’ve played the most are “Parasite Eve” (PS1) and Alan Wake (360). The former I basically completed; the latter maybe a quarter-way.
So why would I buy and want to play this game? Because it looked cool. Anime, cyberpunk, and that original Playstation-esque art style? Sign me up.
And I’m so glad I finally gave it a try.
I loved the ambiance of it. The music, of often lack of it, really helped set the scenes. Often, all I hear is the drone of the facility we’re in. But when something like an enemy notices me or surprises me, the near-silence is cut by a shrill scream — not sure if it’s my character or the enemy — and this nervousness-inducing music starts playing. My heartbeat definitely speeds up.
Visually, there’s lots of darkness and dimness, some parts of the screen are occluded by beds, shelves, walls, etc. So it keeps on my toes. Ooh, what’s around this corner? My character will have her gun drawn, as I slowly navigate her around.
I do like the juxtaposition between dark and grimy environs and cute anime girls.
At its core, this is a mystery game. Why did we crash on this planet? Why are we searching for this other woman? Why is she at this facility? And what in the fuck is going on in this facility, where people are disappearing or dying? What did they find underneath the facility? Luckily, I love mystery games, so this is right up my alley.
One of the things I learned is that I have to be intentional about engaging enemies. Because my character has limited ammo. Like VERY limited. At one point I had like 25 pistol rounds. But it takes 2-4 shots to incapacitate an enemy. And so far, there’s been more than six enemies in an area. I think I’m now down to less than five rounds. Yikes. Very reminiscent of my time in “Alan Wake.”
I do actually enjoy games like this, where you can’t just always go in guns blazing. It’s necessary to plan and strategize moving around the facility. Maybe I can ignore this baddie, but then kill that one in that hallway. Or maybe I can try outrunning all of them. But I can’t kill them all.
Oh god, oh god, oh god…
I’m just under three hours in. I’d be further along, but other than the first session (about an hour), the others have been like 15-25min. Because I’m scared! So it’s like “OK, let’s do this…Oh god, almost died! Let’s save and take a break!” Lol.
But it does keep reeling me back in. I’ll definitely keep playing it. Will I finish it? I hope so. But I have a terrible track record of came completion.
I imagine a “Lives System,” conjures up thoughts of Mario games, where you get 1-Ups. Instead, I took a broader angle with it. Because I don’t think I have a single game in the backlog with a true “Lives System.” I don’t really play platformers.
However, in “This War of Mine,” (TWoM from here on out) characters can die permanently, while the game continues. Unless everyone dies. So to me, that means there’s a “Lives System.” Maybe I should’ve chosen this one for the “Has Permadeath” category.
Review
Right off the bat, this game reminded me of “Frostpunk.” And whadyaknow, it’s made by the same developer! While “Frostpunk” stems from climate catastrophe, and TWoM starts with a civil war, both are 100% survival management games. Though from different heights: Frostpunk is about keeping a village or town alive, while TWoM is about a small group of people, essentially a household, surviving.
With not even an hour and a half of playtime, I didn’t get terribly far. Only to Day 6. There was no tutorial, which was a little surprising, but I wonder if that’s intentional. In a real like situation, trying to eke out a living in a city under siege, there’s no tutorial. I imagine you make it up as you go along.
I had to manage my three characters’ hunger, tiredness, health, and warmth. Didn’t have to worry about warmth, as the temperatures were still in the 60s F (15.5-20.5C). The tiredness was easy—just send people to bed—but the hunger was definitely more challenging. I realized that not everyone could eat everyday.
I scavenged a couple of locations, but even though those places were plentiful with materials, I couldn’t get much. A character can only hold a limited amount of items. But then those items would quickly be used for firewood for cooking, filters for making clean water, or making lockpicks or shovels. Meaning I’d have to go out the following night for sure. And I had to choose whether to prioritize food or other materials to take back. Yet I needed both!
Canned food is the best you all are getting for awhile…
I didn’t do too much combat, but I did do a bad thing…At one house I was scavenging, there was an NPC squatting there. He saw my guy, started begging him for food, and followed my character around as he was checking out the house…So I killed him with a shovel. I just wanted to know what would happen!
Nothing happened. No secret police or friend of the deceased jumping out of the shadows. I did feel a little bad afterwards, since the NPC was nonviolent, simply begging. I checked his body afterwards and he had nothing. So I killed him for no reason. Which made the character I was controlling sad, on top of being hungry and tired.
Better him than you, my man. Just sayin’.
I essentially stopped it there. I kinda got bored. I know I didn’t get deep into it, but I was expecting a little more danger or something at the start. Or I don’t know, some direction. I thought this game would be more scenario-like, like Frostpunk. I need to survive X amount of days, and do at least Y and Z to achieve that goal. Instead, it’s more like a sandbox. I don’t hate sandboxes, but I feel like having some explicit direction would help, other than, “Survive.” Maybe this is why I don’t really play survival games.
Would I get back to This War of Mine? Yeah, probably. I didn’t dislike it. Just got bored. Maybe just wasn’t in the mood for it.
Either way, that’s one game on the backlog crossed off. This is my “war of mine.”
Over on Tildes, which is a reddit-alternative site, the gaming community is running it’s now biannual Backlog Burner! Essentially, the goal is for participants to play games in their “backlog.” You know, those games from Steam Sales, Humble Bundles, free game giveaways, and more, that you just haven’t played. Even though you were excited to get this game 50%, after it was on your wishlist for years.
Anyway, this is my first time participating in the Backlog Burner. To help select games to play, a community member created a “Backlog Bingo” card generator. In the mode I chose, some example categories are “Known for its legacy,” and “Nominated for the Game Awards.” Using these, I pre-selected games that I thought fit the categories I was given.
Ground Rules
The event has no rules, but I wanted to set some for myself. Almost all the games I’ve chosen I’ve literally never played, at least according to Steam. However, there are some where I do have some time tracked. But in these cases, these are games I installed, opened, but then never played. Like I never got beyond the starting menu. Even though Steam says I have thirty minutes in the game. Or it could be cases where I did start a new game, but then quit like five minutes later. I never really got to experience the game, right? I don’t think so.
Additionally, I need to play a game for at least one hour. I don’t need to beat it—which is always unlikely for me. But I think playing for at least one hour is enough time to develop some solid thoughts and feels. If I want to play longer, I can.
Lastly, I need to write a review afterwards. Doesn’t have to be long. Each will have it’s own post.
So with all that said, I think I’m ready. Game on!
As I said in my last post, I recently moved. Which mean that all the work I did in my last apartment is gone. That was mostly physical infrastructure work, particularly the cabling. So now I get to do it again; joy!
But before I get into the new place, I should visit some topics from the past. An update of sorts. Just because I haven’t posted in a year doesn’t mean the homelab has sat untouched for a year.
PowerPanel dashboard, showing the UPS status as normal and full charged.
I say “semi-graceful” since with my setup, I only have ~17min of battery life. That covers three devices: my server, my Unifi Secure Gateway (USG), and a 5-port Unifi Flex-mini Switch.
Via the accompanying PowerPanel software, I can monitor battery status, while also configuring the shutdown behavior in for ESXi. I actually have PowerPanel installed as a separate VM in ESXi. Probably not the best idea, but it works.
Back to the semi-graceful shutdown, VMs sometimes take time to properly shutdown, especially Windows Server. So between ESXi and PowerPanel, I give some time for the VMs to gracefully shutdown. But if they don’t shutdown in time, then ungraceful shutdown of VMs occur, before ESXi gracefully powers down.
Took a bit of testing to get it all figured out, but it does work. At my last apartment, there were a couple of brief blackouts or brownouts. The UPS did exactly what it needed to do.
My (Home) Assistant Quit on Me
The very last post of 2023 was me futzing around with Home Assistant. I had a “concept of a plan” to automate some of my smart home devices.
After getting it installed, though, I didn’t really do much more with it. Stupid, I know.
Unfortunately, at some point towards the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024, the HAOS VM bit the dust.
“Failed to power on virtual machine…File system specific implementation of LookupAndOpen[file] failed.”
I don’t exactly know what happened, or when it happened. But I know there was a power outage one night. A storm, I think. Before I had my UPS…
I can’t say for certain the power outage was the reason. After all, it was at least a couple weeks later that I realized HAOS wasn’t turned on. When I tried turning it back on, I got that message, and have ever since.
I did look into this error message a little bit. But I think reinstalling HAOS is the better choice. Especially since I didn’t do any further setup anyway.
I’m still using ESXi/vSphere 6.5 U3 on older than 10yrs old server. Which is fine, but at some point I’ll need to replace the hardware and software. Unfortunately, there are no more perpetual, free licenses for non-commercial purposes. I never even got a 7.0 license.
With that in mind, I thought it’d be interesting to play with Proxmox, which is a FOSS virtualization platform. As such, I installed it on another server I had lying around. Unlike ESXi, Proxmox is nowhere near as user friendly. And the documentation that’s available is pretty poor, in my opinion.
That’s one of the reasons FOSS sometimes annoys me: it’s often not very accessible to anyone who’s not already an expert. But that’s a topic for another post.
The first thing I wanted to do was connect my current NFS-based OS ISOs storage to Proxmox. This way, I wouldn’t have to use extra drive space on the new Proxmox server by copying over an ISO. If the data exists on the network, use it! This NFS share is hosted on my primary Windows Server VM.
I was able to point Proxmox to the NFS. However, Proxmox wanted to use its own directory structure within that NFS. I found that rather annoying. This wouldn’t be where the Proxmox VMs live, after all. It’s simply where the ISOs are. Why should I have to rearrange the directory structure and files just for Proxmox?
I honestly don’t remember if I created a VM after all that. I don’t remember if it worked or not. But given the situation with VMWare, that won’t be the last time I play with Proxmox.
Let’s Get Physical, Physical (Again)
The last thing to report is minor, but worth mentioning. I ended up adding two more Ethernet runs. The important one being from one room to another, underneath the carpet and along the baseboards. Ah, the joys of apartment living.
Anyway, that’s not that big of a deal. I had already done it once, after all.
Rather, it was the idea that led to this. In my old apartment, the Google Fiber jack (ONT) was in the living room. The guest room down the hall served as the “server closet.” The server, Unifi AP, main switch, UPS, and other devices were in the guest room. But the Unifi Secure Gateway (USG) was in the living room, since the Internet point of entry was there. Which seemed strange to me. I wanted all the main gear in the guest room.
It’s hard to explain without a map or diagram, so I’ll use some. This is the diagram of my original layout:
My original setup at my last apartment. Simple, if not a bit overkill.
To move the USG to the guest bedroom, there were two ways to achieve this. One was by adding a second run from the living room to the guest bedroom. One run would connect the fiber jack to the WAN side of the USG. The other run would connect from the LAN side of the USG back to the switch in the living room.
But I wondered if it was possible to do this:
Note that the USG doesn’t have that many ports; I forgot to add a second switch in that room, but the idea still stands.
Essentially, could a WAN connection go through a VLAN? Because if it could, I wouldn’t have to run another cable. I looked it up and even asked on reddit. And the answer was yes, this is entirely possible and not that unusual!
Unfortunately, when I tried to do this, it didn’t work. It even caused me some more issues with the Unifi controller being inaccessible while it wasn’t working.
In the end, I just laid a second down a second Ethernet run. Maybe I gave up too quickly, but sometimes the easiest solution…is simply the easiest solution 🤷♂️
So that was last year in the life of the homelab. Not as much as I wanted to do, but it was at least something. And that’s the point, right? To at least play around with it and learn something.
Wow, the last time I actually published an article was October 1, 2023. As I’m typing this, it’s September 28, 2024. Almost exactly a year. That’s not to say I didn’t try to post. I have a couple of drafts sitting on the shelf on the back, but I just lost steam with them.
So it’s been a year—What’s new?
A lot. I’m no longer in Kansas City; I’m in Washington, D.C.
Yup, I’m in the Nation’s Capital.
Well, in the “DMV” anyway. I don’t actually live in D.C. proper. Regardless, I moved here about 5 weeks ago.
It was at least a 16 hours drive. We—my dad and brother—did it over two days. I flew them into KC to help me. We left on a Saturday around noon and drove the moving truck and my car east along I-70. Terre Haute, Indiana was the goal for that evening. The next morning, on Sunday, we did the remaining roughly 10 hours drive to D.C., arriving just before midnight.
Google Maps screenshot, showing the long route literally halfway across the country.
That was quite an awesome drive, especially once we got to eastern Ohio and started driving into the Appalachians. While not as majestic as the Rockies, I think the Appalachians are far more picturesque. Once the sun started setting, the shadows of the mountains on each other created these awesome silhouettes. The mountains looked illustrated.
It was a much more relaxing drive than I thought it was going to be. Cheaper, gas-wise, too. But the rental truck itself was like $2200, so…
But why did I move to D.C.? I got a new job! I left the non-profit sector for a sorta different kind of “non-profit:” The Government 🦅
I’ll still be doing IT, but in a somewhat different manner than I was doing in my last role. It’s tough right now as I don’t fully know what my role is. And at times, it seems my employers don’t know either. But I’m sure it’ll come together. It’s only (“only”) been three weeks since I’ve started, after all.
Is this a dream come true? No, but both moving to D.C. and getting a federal job were goals of mine. And now I can cross both off! I liked Kansas City, having lived there for about 30yrs total, but it was time to go. I was the last of my family members to leave town, so there was really little reason to stay.
Unfortunately, I’m now even farther away from my family since they live in Las Vegas! My flights used to be about three hours from Kansas City to Vegas, if non-stop. Now I’m likely looking at five hours or longer. I imagine I won’t be visiting my family as much, which is certainly a bit sad. But it is what it is.
My goal is to eventually get a full remote position with the government. Just like my last job was. If I can make it a year here, I think I’ll start looking around for something else within the government.
On the tech front, I obviously had to pack up my server and network to move out here. Once I got here, I had to set it back up. Which I just did this weekend. I think I’ll explain more in a separate post.
I can’t say I’ll have more free time than I had before—It’s a hybrid role, so I’m back to commuting. But I am looking to get back into messing with my homelab. So hopefully I’ll post more things here. Even if write one blog post a month, I’ll be happy.
I’m lazy. To the point where I don’t even want to get up to turn off the lights. Thank god for Internet-enabled home automation.
I started with smart plugs — which I’ve had for several years now — then expanded to Google Nest devices (“Hey Google, turn off my lights!”), smart bulbs, and an Ecobee thermostat. I even have an indoor security camera, but that’s not really a part of my automation. Still an IoT device though. Anyway, these are all different brands: Google, TP-Link Kasa, Ecobee, Tuya, etc. Luckily, home automation has evolved to be pretty open. As in, I can control everything from Google Home on my phone. I have the separate apps for each brand, but I do tend to mainly use Google Home. It works great; only the security camera still needs its native app for me to view the live feed or recordings.
Though with the continuing and increasing rate of “enshittification of the Internet,” I thought it might be a good idea to ensure that my home devices don’t have to rely on the “goodwill” of these companies and their clouds. Just because controlling my smart plugs from anywhere in the world is free today, doesn’t mean it can’t be a paid subscription tomorrow. Looking at you, BMW, and your heated seat subscription.
Enter Home Assistant. I’d been hearing about Home Assistant for some time now, on reddit, Lemmy, Tildes, etc. I also have a couple of friends who use it, too. So I thought I’d finally give it a try.
I’ll probably break this up into a few parts, since this will be an on-going project to get everything working properly and the way I want. Home Assistant can be a very powerful automation hub, but it’ll likely require a lot of configuration and tinkering. I need a plan.
The Plan
Install Home Assistant. Find out what the hardware requirements are and what I can run it on. I have a server (or three…though only one is ever running) plus many other spare or backup computers lying around. So I have options.
Add all or as many of my IoT devices that I can. Some basic research shows that all the brands I use have integrations with Home Assistant.
See what can be controlled locally. Hopefully everything! If I lose my Internet connection or the cloud is no longer free, will I still be able to control my devices? Right now, that’s not the case with all my devices. That’s the main reason I want Home Assistant: local control.
Create the automations. My automations are simple: lights, via the smart plugs, turn on and off at certain times. My Ecobee thermostat has standard programming options of if temperature hits X, then do Y. But maybe there are more advanced things I want my devices to do. I’ll find out what’s possible.
Remotely access and control Home Assistant from wherever I am, so long as I have Internet access. I can do that now via Google Home and the various native apps. Can I do this with Home Assistant, given that it’s installed locally? How can I do this securely? While my thermostat and camera are what I mess with the most when I’m out and about, I do sometimes turn lights on and off. This is especially true when I’m out of town.
The Installation
This did not go smoothly. Home Assistant — I’m going to use HA or HAOS from here on out — has many guides on installing the system, with several different routes one could take. Which is great, but I also feel like the guides aren’t as complete as they should be and are inconsistent.
I initially wanted to install HA on my Ubuntu Server VM. It’s getting a bit loaded up with stuff — the Unifi Controller, DDNS stuff, Docker, and Wireguard — but thought it’d be fine. However, I quickly realized that HA is mainly a standalone OS. There are other versions, but HAOS is the recommended one.
Chart on their installation page showing the different versions/methods available.
OK, no problem. I can install it on a NUC I have lying around. Or better yet, I have ESXi on my server; just a matter of creating a new VM. This is where it started getting confusing. Rather than just showing me an ISO, there was an option for installing on a Generic X86-64 bit machine. That’s what I wanted right? A VM is just that; just not physical.
Attempt 1: Generic X86-64
I downloaded the specified img.xz file, extracted the IMG file with 7-ZIP, uploaded it to my ISOs datastore in ESXi, and then created the VM. One important thing was to make sure the VM loads with EFI instead of BIOS. After setting it to EFI, I loaded the IMG in the virtual “CD Drive.” I’ve done this several times, to install Windows/Windows Server or Ubuntu as VMs.
Except that didn’t work. It was like booting without boot media. Nothing happened. The instructions were for a bare metal installation, burning the IMG on to a USB stick using something like Balena Etcher. Since this was a VM, I skipped all that. There’s no “virtual USB stick” needed here; that’s what the IMG file is. I tried a couple more times from scratch, deleting the VM and then recreating it, and it still didn’t work. I even tried mounting the IMG on my local machine; wouldn’t mount. I wasn’t sure what was going on there.
Attempt 2: Using an OVA/OVF in ESXi
Undaunted, I tried a different method. One of alternative methods. Hey, it even mentions ESXi here! Wish I’d seen that beforehand. I downloaded the OVA file (never used one of these) and then used the option in ESXi to “Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file.” I selected the OVA file I downloaded and it was uploaded to ESXi. It was successfully created and I started the new VM.
It booted properly and began loading up. All was looking good, until I started seeing some warnings and errors. They were similar to this. And it just kept looping. I tried rebooting the VM a few times, but it kept giving the same error. It never got to completion.
After deleting the VM, trying again with the OVA file a few times, but getting the same error, I was getting very frustrated. This was still only the installation!
Attempt 3: Using a VMDK in ESXi
Finally, I found a guide on the HA forums on how to install HAOS on ESXI 6.7 (I have 6.5, but the versions are basically the same). This one references a VMDK file! I’m more familiar with those. I did eventually find where to get a VMDK under the Windows or Linux install instructions. I guess for those two platforms, the idea is to be running HAOS in VMware Workstation. Why a VMDK isn’t also linked in the alternative methods guide, I don’t know. Or more importantly, why isn’t this forum post part of the official methods?
Either way, it finally booted to completion, and the lovely HAOS “banner” showed in the VM’s virtual console.
Installed and running!
It took me 2 hours to successfully install and boot the OS. But now that part was done! Now I could start Onboarding with HAOS.
Delayed (On)boarding
I quickly typed in the the .local address into my browser, to get to the Web UI. After fiddling with some browser settings (I had a browser-based VPN option enabled for “securing” non-HTTP sites, which I had to turn off), the page loaded!
Except the system was still “preparing” and could “take up to 20 minutes.”
More waiting?
What? What kind of preparation takes 20 minutes? OK, whatever. I left it up on another screen while I went back to whatever else I was doing. After at least 20 minutes of still seeing this screen, I was getting worried again. Luckily, clicking that blue dot showed a log.
This is what I found, repeated over and over:
23-09-30 02:49:30 ERROR (MainThread) [supervisor.misc.tasks] Home Assistant watchdog reanimation failed!
23-09-30 02:51:30 WARNING (MainThread) [supervisor.misc.tasks] Watchdog miss API response from Home Assistant
A quick Google Search led me to a GitHub issue where others had been reporting a similar problem. Luckily, it was a fairly recent post; the initial issue was reported only 3 weeks ago (at the time of this writing).
There were a couple potential solutions there, including trying to install HAOS 10.4 — I was using 10.5 — and then updating. But one that seemed to take the least effort was to simply…wait it out. A few people mentioned that after waiting a bit, the system eventually did what it needed to do and would be ready for input. For some, it took 15 minutes, while others waited hours.
One project contributor even mentioned what was going on:
tl;dr: The errors are a bug in Supervisor, but download should continue despite the errors. Usually you just have to be patient while Home Assistant OS downloads the latest version of Home Assistant Core (which is around 1.8GB at the time of writing).
The details:
When first starting Home Assistant OS, the Supervisor downloads the latest version of Home Assistant Core. During that time, a small replacement for Core called landing page is running. It seems that the Supervisor does API checks for this small version of Core as well, leading to this messages:
23-09-26 10:33:48 WARNING (MainThread) [supervisor.misc.tasks] Watchdog miss API response from Home Assistant
23-09-26 10:35:48 ERROR (MainThread) [supervisor.misc.tasks] Watchdog found a problem with Home Assistant API!
23-09-26 10:35:48 ERROR (MainThread) [supervisor.misc.tasks] Home Assistant watchdog reanimation failed!
At first, a warning appears, 2 minutes later the first error appears. Both messages should not appear while the landing page is running, this is a bug in Supervisor.
If the download completes within 2 minutes, then non of this errors are visible. So this requires a somewhat slower Internet connection to show up.
While I was doubtful that this was some slow download issue — I have a gigabit Internet connection — I was frustrated and tired. It was already nearly 3:00am, and I really didn’t want to have to throw out this installation and try again or try HAOS 10.4. So I waited.
I didn’t go to bed; I was playing Final Fantasy XIV during all of this. But about 2 hours later, it finally did complete whatever it was doing, and I was prompted to create my smart home. I guess it was a slow download issue, probably on the other end.
It was around 5:00am when I finally called it quits. I had been working on installing HAOS for at least 5 hours. Which I found to be a ridiculous amount of time and effort to do something that’s typically fast and simple. I have things to say about that, but that’ll be for another post, another day.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I felt like the official instructions were pretty mediocre. They weren’t necessarily wrong, but rather lacking in details and information. Because of that, it led me down erroneous pathways that were wastes of time. Thank goodness for other users.
If you encounter any issues, the official forums, GitHub, and the official Discord server are very informative and filled with helpful people. Past reddit posts also provided some decent help or at least pointers. So far, I’ve been able to find the help that I needed. Not all projects or systems can say that, even with large userbases.
Anyway, Home Assistant OS is now installed, running, and waiting for me. The next step is to add all my devices, which will be in the next entry.
TL;DR: I’m using WireGuard. And it works perfectly. I’ve used it many times while traveling. I even picked-up a travel router — a GLiNet Slate Plus — and installed a WireGuard config on it, so that whenever my devices are connected to the travel router, they’re connected back to my home network. I’m also still using that subdomain for the VPN address that I set-up with DDNS.
It took me a couple attempts to get WireGuard working. Both relied on using Docker, at my friend’s insistence. I don’t really know how to use Docker — neither does he — so that became a huge impediment on my first attempt.
I found instructions on how to install WireGuard via Docker from linuxserver.io. And it worked! I downloaded a WireGuard client on my phone, installed the client configuration, and connected to the VPN. Connecting to the VPN is practically instant with WireGuard!
However, I only had that single config, which was shared across a couple laptops and my phone. While rare that I’d need multiple devices connected at the same time, it’d be impossible to do so with all of them sharing the same WG config. This, I believe, is because they’d all use the same private IP address, since WireGuard doesn’t have DHCP and instead assigns a static IP. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to create additional unique configs with that specific WireGuard implementation. Everything was done via CLI, and I’m already bad at using command line on Linux. Adding Docker to it all just made it 10x more confusing and worse.
So I tore it out. Almost literally, since I was so frustrated after spending several hours researching and trying things. Admittedly, I also recognize the irony here: my travel router shares its WireGuard VPN connection with all my devices connected to it, negating the need for separate, per-device VPN configs.
Anyway, I eventually found another WireGuard implementation called WireGuard Easy (WG-Easy). It, too, was installed with Docker. And, boy, was it actually easy! Having a Web UI made it real easy to manage.
Each of these devices has its own IP so they can be used all at the same time.
It’s just a few clicks to add a new client or remove one. I can even disable/enable a client via that red switch. Removing clients altogether is as simple as clicking the trashcan icon. It’ll even show me what devices are currently connected as it’ll show some basic traffic stats.
I do wish it had a more robust system for tracking those stats, historically. A log of when devices connected/disconnected would be nice too. But, hey, it’s called WG-Easy for a reason.
So yeah, the VPN is working fine. I’ve had no issues whatsoever since going to WG-Easy.
I would still like to have my VPN through my Unifi router. Mainly because then I could see all the devices connected to the network in one place. Since the VPN server is separate from the router, the Unifi Controller doesn’t see those devices, since the clients are on a separate subnet. But I’d need to replace my USG with something newer. And pricier.
