SHOS is a small, bootable installer for Home Assistant on generic x86_64 hardware, designed to be easy to flash and simple to use, specifically filling the gap left by the lack of an official HAOS ISO/USB installer for PCs. It installs the full Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS) directly onto your machine, giving you the standard, fully supported OS configuration recommended for x86_64 systems. Once installation is complete, the result behaves like a normal HAOS install, with official update support, add-ons, and long-term maintenance handled through Home Assistant’s built-in tools.

Flashing SHOS to a USB

Prerequisites

• A Windows or Linux computer
• A USB drive with at least 1 GB of storage
• balenaEtcher

Flashing from Windows

1. If you do not have balenaEtcher installed, download and install it from the official site.
2. Download the latest SHOS ISO from the releases page.
3. Use balenaEtcher to flash the ISO file to your USB drive.
4. Wait for the flashing and verification process to complete.
5. Safely eject your USB drive.

Flashing from Linux

1. Plug in your USB drive.
2. Open a terminal.
3. Run lsblk and identify your USB device path (for example, /dev/sdb, not a partition like /dev/sdb1).
4. Ensure the USB device is not mounted (unmount any /dev/sdX* partitions if needed, replacing X with the correct letter).
5. Download the latest SHOS ISO from the releases page.
6. Run this command, replacing /path/to/file.iso with the ISO you downloaded and /dev/sdX with your USB device path:
   sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/file.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress oflag=sync
7. Wait for it to finish flashing and syncing. The command exits when complete.
8. Run sync once more to ensure all data is written, then safely remove your USB drive.

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Flashing HAOS from SHOS

Prerequisites

• An x86_64 computer with a working network connection
• A USB drive containing SHOS
• A keyboard and display

Guide

1. Boot into your computer’s BIOS.
2. Enable UEFI, but disable Secure Boot.
3. Shut down the computer and insert the SHOS USB drive.
4. Power on and open the boot menu (usually by pressing F12 or F2).
5. Select the USB drive from the boot options.
6. When the boot menu loads, press Enter to continue.
7. Once SHOS has booted, select Install Home Assistant and follow the on-screen instructions.
   • A working network connection is required.
   • Installation may take up to 30 minutes.

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Building SHOS

Prerequisites

• Debian 13
• At least 5 GB of free space
• The latest version of live-build

Guide

1. Clone the repository:
   gh repo clone Crater78/SHOS-Installer
2. Navigate into the SHOS directory:
   cd SHOS-Installer
3. Run the build script:
   sudo bash build.sh
4. Wait for the process to complete (typically 3–5 minutes depending on system performance).

That’s it! The output of the build script will be located in the tmp folder.