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Last active December 30, 2025 15:35
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Home Assistant setup on Raspberry Pi with TinyCore Linux (RAM only OS)
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Pi running Home Assistant in RAM.md

Home Assistant setup on Raspberry Pi with TinyCore Linux (RAM only OS)

This is a revisit of https://gist.github.com/BillyNate/d3124edfa903f288bfc8b7f37a155971, but using some different methods.
These are the steps taken to have Home Assistant 2025.7.1 with Python 3.13 on piCore 16
Newer version might work as well (or maybe even better), but have not been tested.

Setup

Follow steps of Basic setup of TinyCore/PiCore on a Raspberry Pi

Install UV

  1. Install dependencies: tce-load -wi squashfs-tools
  2. Download, untar, pack, install & cleanup: 
    mkdir -p ./tmp/usr/local/bin && \
wget https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/releases/latest/download/uv-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz && \
tar xvf uv-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz -C ./tmp/usr/local/bin --strip-components=1 && \
mksquashfs ./tmp /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/uv.tcz && \
echo "uv.tcz" >> /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/onboot.lst && \
tce-load -i uv && \
rm -rf ./tmp uv-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz
  3. UV should now be available: uv --version
  4. Create persistent UV directory (this goes against the "RAM only", but is our best option): 
    mkdir -p /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/persistent/uv && \
mkdir ~/.local/share && \
ln -s /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/persistent/uv ~/.local/share/uv
  5. Make sure UV's cache is also in the persistent directory:
    1. Create /etc/profile.d/uv.sh and add export UV_CACHE_DIR="$HOME/.local/share/uv/cache"
    2. Add /etc/profile.d/uv.sh to /opt/.filetool.lst
    3. Run source /etc/profile.d/uv.sh
  6. Save: backup

Install managed Python

  1. Install Python 3.13 through UV: uv python install 3.13
  2. Test: uv run python --version

Install Home Assistant

  1. Install dependencies: tce-load -wi compiletc rust bluez openssl-dev openjpeg-dev autoconf ffmpeg libjpeg-turbo-dev
  2. Install Home Assistant: uv tool install homeassistant (or use homeassistant==2025.7.1 for a specific version)
  3. Save: backup (only because ~/.local/bin/hass is created)
  4. Run Home Assistant once: uv tool run --from homeassistant hass -v --skip-pip, this generates the needed configuration
  5. Create persistent custom components directory: 
    mkdir -p /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/persistent/custom_components && \
ln -s /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/persistent/custom_components ~/.homeassistant/custom_components
  6. Optionally: Disable Cloud (Nabu Casa):
    1. Remove default_config from ~/.homeassistant/configuration.yaml
    2. Install Mostly Default Config as custom_component (see Install HACS on how to install a custom component)
    3. Update configuration.yaml: 
      mostly_default_config:
exclude:
  - cloud
  - ...
  7. Run Home Assistant again: uv tool run --from homeassistant hass -v and let it install the needed integrations. Once it says "Starting Home Assistant" it's finished!
  8. Open the web interface and create your basic config. Once done exit through Developer tools -> Services -> Home Assistant Core Integration: Stop
  9. Clean up the home directory as much as possible
  10. Add .homeassistant/home-assistant.log*, .homeassistant/tts, .homeassistant/deps, .homeassistant/*.db-wal & .homeassistant/*.db-shm to /opt/.xfiletool.lst
  11. Have Home Assistant start on boot:
    1. Create startup script /opt/hassboot.sh containing su - tc -c "uv tool run --from homeassistant hass -c /home/tc/.homeassistant"
    2. Turn startup script into executable: sudo chmod +x /opt/hassboot.sh
    3. Add /opt/hassboot.sh & to /opt/bootlocal.sh in order to have Home Assistant auto start at boot
  12. Save: backup

Use port 80

  1. Install iptables: tce-load -wi iptables
  2. Prepend iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 8123 to /opt/hassboot.sh
  3. Save: backup

Seperate history data

Home Assistant records data and keeps it in the home-assistant_v2.db file, which keeps on growing in size. To keep user data backups small the recorder data can be kept in a seperate file, not saved on backups:

  1. Update ~/.homeassistant/configuration.yaml to keep recorder data in seperate file: 
    recorder:
  db_url: sqlite:////home/tc/.homeassistant/history.db
  2. Add .homeassistant/history.db* to /opt/.xfiletool.lst
  3. Save: backup

It's also possible to set the db_url to a remote (MariaDB for example) location

Install HACS

  1. Install unzip: tce-load -wi unzip
  2. Download latest package: wget https://github.com/hacs/integration/releases/latest/download/hacs.zip
  3. Create directory: mkdir -p ~/.homeassistant/custom_components/hacs
  4. Unzip package: unzip hacs.zip -d ~/.homeassistant/custom_components/hacs
  5. Clean up the home directory
  6. Restart Home Assistant
  7. Go to Settings > Devices & services > Add integration, and add HACS
  8. Check if everything is installed correctly
  9. Save: backup

Optionally: Install Mosquitto (MQTT broker)

  1. Install Mosquitto: tce-load -wi mosquitto
  2. Create Mosquitto config directory: mkdir ~/.mosquitto
  3. Create a password file: mosquitto_passwd -c ~/.mosquitto/pwfile hass (change hass to any username you want)
  4. Create a config at ~/.mosquitto/mosquitto.conf containing:
connection_messages true
allow_anonymous false
password_file /home/tc/.mosquitto/pwfile
listener 1883
  1. Test: mosquitto -c ~/.mosquitto/mosquitto.conf
  2. If everything's good, add to boot:
    1. Create startup script /opt/mosqboot.sh containing su - tc -c "mosquitto -c /home/tc/.mosquitto/mosquitto.conf -d"
    2. Turn startup script into executable: sudo chmod +x /opt/mosqboot.sh
    3. Add /opt/mosqboot.sh & to /opt/bootlocal.sh in order to have Home Assistant auto start at boot
  3. Save: backup

Update Home Assistant

If Home Assistant needs to be updated later on:

  1. Stop the running Home Assistant process
  2. Upgrade: uv tool upgrade homeassistant
  3. Save: backup
  4. Reboot: sudo reboot
@BillyNate
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BillyNate commented Dec 12, 2025

I try to keep the back-up as small as possible for speedy back-ups and quicker boot ups.
This I why I don't like to have logs in the back-up, nor other temporary created files.
The history will only be lost after a reboot. But if you reboot (or maybe hard reset the Pi), without performing a back-up first, the restored history will be outdated anyway. So I see no advantage to adding the history to the back-up.
You could create another persistent directory with a symlink to keep the history.db file. Keep in mind the history.db file gets frequent writes, so this might wear out the micro-sd over time (highly dependent on the quality of the card).
(Personally I'm thinking about running a small SQL server on another Pi to store databases for several applications including the HA history)

I have not experienced integrations to fail because of files missing from the back-up. But we probably don't use the same integrations.
If you feel you need keep any of these files in the back-up, you should do so; it won't do any harm

You might want to take a look at the HA logs to find clues about why some integrations fail to start. 😉

Don't worry about the questions, that's fine. My apologies for being so slow to answer 🫣

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