Electric Eel Homebridge app not working

If you read what I wrote in the feature enhancement, checking the “Host Network” option does not work for Homebridge. Several of us have tried it and it fails. When I check the Host network option, Homebridge goes into a restart loop where it keeps trying to initialize, but can’t bind to the network and restarts, then repeats over and over. If I leave the Host Network option unchecked, then it properly starts up, but binds to the 172.16 network, which lets it phone home for updates and such, but can’t talk to any devices on my network. I also can’t access the Homebridge GUI from the browser as you need to be able to do. Under Dragonfish and prior, selecting the “Add external interface” resulted in an app where I had both the 172.16 and my internal IP (192.168.68.152) as available network devices. In that scenario, I can go into the Homebridge settings inside the GUI , and then tell it to advertise on my internal IP, which then results in everything working.

Maybe it is a lack of knowledge, but hopefully if so someone can point those of us having issues into the correct direction.

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As I’ve said in the replies earlier I’ve tried those options to the same result.

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Ya tried the host network option. Doesn’t work.

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Also having the same issue. Can get UI without host network, but no HomeKit connectivity, or nothing with Host Network enabled.

Guessing no one has worked out a workaround yet?

Try to bind an alias IP to the bridge and tie homebridge to that IP. The reboot issue is because it is trying to setup mDNS which conflicts with TN.

I’m not on EE at the moment because of a reboot issue, but I did have Homebridge working there with a config similar to this one.

version: "2"
services:
  homebridge:
    image: homebridge/homebridge:latest
    restart: always
    network_mode: host
    ports:
      - 192.168.1.51:8581:8581
    volumes:
      - /mnt/Onyx/Docker/homebridge:/homebridge
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options:
        max-size: 10mb
        max-file: "1"
networks: {}

Hey everyone,
I cannot take credit for finding the solution, but I can confirm that I was able to get my old Homebridge install working using this configuration.

The homebridge team has updated the Docker instruction for post TrueNAS 24.10.0 installs and following those instructions worked. This was posted 4 hours ago. I took their barebones docker compose and combined it with the earlier version posted in this thread. This included passing through my Intel ARC GPU. Hope this helps everyone get their configs working. I have posted my compose file for reference below.

One more tip: If you already have docker network that you used to use for your homebridge as a bridge then you will want to remove it. You can check what networks are created by going to the Shell or SSH if enabled and typing:

docker network ls

You can then remove it using

docker network rm {network name}

This was causing me issues initially as I was getting errors that there was an overlaying network.

networks:
  homebridge_net:
    driver: macvlan
    driver_opts:
      parent: br01 # I have a bridge interface set up due to VM limitations. This should either be your NIC or the bridge using your NIC.
    ipam:
      config:
        - gateway: ###.###.###.### #gateway IP
          subnet: ###.###.###.###/24 #subnet using CIDR notation
services:
  homebridge:
    container_name: homebridge
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          cpus: '2.5'
          memory: 3072M
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri #passing through Intel QSV Card
    environment:
      - PUID=568
      - PGID=568
      - TZ=America/Los_Angeles
    image: homebridge/homebridge:latest
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options:
        max-file: '1'
        max-size: 10m
    networks:
      homebridge_net:
        ipv4_address: ###.###.###.### #IP Address of your homebridge server
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /mnt/pool/dataset/homebridge:/homebridge

Here is a reference for the likely passthrough parameters needed for NVidia as well

    - "/dev/nvidia0:/dev/nvidia0"                 # Nvidia CUDA
    - "/dev/nvidiactl:/dev/nvidiactl"
    - "/dev/nvidia-modeset:/dev/nvidia-modeset"
    - "/dev/nvidia-nvswitchctl:/dev/nvidia-nvswitchctl"
    - "/dev/nvidia-uvm:/dev/nvidia-uvm"
    - "/dev/nvidia-uvm-tools:/dev/nvidia-uvm-tools"

This is only a guess however from another container (photoprism) that I use.

Can confirm that the new walkthrough that the homebridge group put up works! Thanks simondanielj!

This thread is the closest I’ve come to seeing the issues I’m having with homekit bridge on home assistant app (official install. I can’t turn off mDNS because it’s used by TN for time machine. I just want to pass through port 5353 to the host, or set the driver to host on the official docker container, but I can no idea where that is. I would have to imagine a very large portion of Home Assistant users on TrueNAS Scale (EE) will be needing homekit bridge, and the fact that my home network can’t see it running behind the docker 172.x.x.x network has caused me to read through dozens of threads without any realy solution. Can’t mDNS and Homekit Bridge play nice on port 5353 together? I even have a 2nd NIC that I would bind the docker container to if I knew how, which hopefully would free up port 5353, but it seems that TrusNAS scale just runs everything x2 on both NICs anyways.