Installing HAOS (Home Assistant OS) in a VM

[DjP-iX]

You likely selected Move instead of Clone.

[moebis]

ah, so that wasn’t so clear. So if I clone it, then the hidden .ix-virt volume becomes the active volume and the existing HAOS zvol replicates and serves as a backup?

[troy]

So, this is something that has changed between RC and the release.

I don’t understand why we now have to clone or move the zvol to use it. I already have it set up in the location I want it to be. Why can’t we just select and use the zvol as before? Obviously, I don’t understand why this change was required. Can someone please explain?

Does this get rid of the extra root drive that is being created? Or is the clone going to the root drive instead of having an empty root and a zvol attached?

[troy]

@moebis

I had a “VM” dataset with a “HAOS” zvol. Now I only see the dataset “VM” …it’s like incus took it over, which is a bummer because I wanted to setup replication to another dataset for backups.

It didn’t work like this in the RC - I have (well I had) a similar setup. I don’t understand why we can’t just set up our NAS with stuff where we want it to be. Why does stuff need to be manipulated and moved around? Is it really that hard to let us manage our own data locations. I was looking forward to eventually moving my primary HAOS back to TrueNAS, but not so much anymore.

[DjP-iX]

@troy

I don’t understand why we now have to clone or move the zvol to use it. I already have it set up in the location I want it to be. Why can’t we just select and use the zvol as before?

My understanding of this, and I’m not a developer so that is second-hand, is that there were some significant performance issues with mounted zvols discovered in the early release versions, so that is part of the motivation. The other purpose, which is indicated in the UI help text, is to allow Incus to fully manage the instance volumes, which in turn exposes them for Incus’s native backup/restore and snapshot functionality.

Work is in progress to expose these features in the UI.

@troy

Does this get rid of the extra root drive that is being created?

Currently it does not, but I believe there is also development work in progress to allow you to select a volume and then make it the root disk or move it to the root disk at least, so an additional volume mount will not be needed.

[troy]

Thank you for the explanation.

When I update this guide, do you think it would be better to suggest a clone or move when importing the zvol?

[DjP-iX]

My guess would be clone is more useful for people trying it out, since that allows for easier roll back to the 24.10 boot environment if needed.