Armbian with Virtualbox and Home Assistant

[greg396]

Dear Armbian-Enthusiasts!

 

I would like to install Armbian with Virtualbox, so that I can run Home Assistant (HA) in a VM environment (Intel chip .vdi) - yes, no container.

 

Would chose this image  "Armbian 25.11.1 Minimal / IOT 6.1 kernel" (rolling release)

 

Installing Virtualbox with:

sudo apt install virtualbox

 

Is this possible?

 

Best wishes, Greg

 

 

Links:

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/linux/

https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox

https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-5-plus/

 

[eselarm]

No; an Intel (virtual machine) image does not run natively on ARM (OPi5+). You need an ARM (virtual machine) image, but those are not available (at least not click-to-download). If you look in raw downlaod folders and/or github, maybe there are nowadays. Or ask on the forum there. You need a general Aarch64 UEFI HAOS image, qcow2 or raw/flat/img format and that will be able to run at full speed on a hypervisor. Not sure about VirtualBox, but for sure the Linux built-in QEMU/libvirtd/KVM. Main user-inteface program is installed via sudo apt install virt-manager. 

[greg396]

Dear eselarm, thank you for clarification! Really sad that there's no proper arm support yet. VM is really handy using snapshots.

[eselarm]

If you want snapshots, you can also do it on filesystem level. Look at Btrfs and snapper.

While testing HA 2 years ago, I also took the Intel VM image and made it work in a libvirt VM on an Atom J1900 board. Default size was 32G I think, way too big IMO. So I also took a clone of an existing Debian aarch64 VM (runs on RK3588 or BCM2711) and installed HA in there with supervisor method. I use Btrfs as filesystem, so do not take snapshot of VM image, but just Btrfs snapshot of the rootfs in that VM with HA. Also use Zstd compression, so much smaller than that 32G. But as a matter of fact, HA has good internal backup-restore, so that is also very useful, especially moving between Intel HA en Arm HA.

[MacBreaker]

Hello @greg396

What exactly are you trying to achieve?

 

I assume you want to run Home Assistant in a virtual machine on ARM64.

That's possible, but you need to install some prerequisites.

According to your links, you're using an Orange Pi 5 Plus (RAM unknown).

It's powerful enough, but I recommend at least 8GB. 🙂

 

First, install an ARM64 clone of Proxmox Virtual Environment (PXVirt).

https://github.com/jiangcuo/pxvirt

 

Then install HA:

https://pimox-scripts.com/scripts?id=pimox-haos-vm

 

`bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/asylumexp/Proxmox/main/vm/pimox-haos-vm.sh)"`

 

Done.

 

If you run it on a home server it's OK!

 

---

 

I personally use a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM running Armbian (trixie) since 1,5 year with PXVirt.

It's running:

• Home Assistant (ARM64)
• Pi-hole
• OMV
• VM-Trixie

Everything performs very well. 😃

 

Regards, Markus

[eselarm]

OK I see, now I remember, HAOS aarch64 has been there for download for a long time, I even recommended it to some one on another forum who also only saw the Intel VM, but as I indicated, is a bit hidden on github:

https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/

and direct latest link:

https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/17.2/haos_generic-aarch64-17.2.img.xz

 

I personally don't want the Proxmox stuff indicated by Markus, I just use the standard packages available In Debian (or Opensuse) for years, on both Intel and Arm. Like indicated install virt-manager. 

It is manual install, but at least then more control. I used/use a mix of LVM based block devices and also just raw images (like unxz the one referenced).

 

I see on RPi4 I have the HAOS VM configured with 2 vCPUs and 1GB RAM.

 

On RK3588, so OPi5+, you will need CPU pinning if you use the vendor kernel (6.1) as it does not support mixing big and little (Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55). Or use just 1 vCPU for the VM, then de-facto no mixing. Mixing is no problem with mainline based kernel, so then you can just use 8 vCPU's if you want. I currently have my NanoPi-R6C running with kernel 6.19.10+deb14-arm64-16k (from Debian sid) and works fine with VM's and all 8 cores.
 

Edited April 8 by eselarm

[DavidFajardo]

On 4/6/2026 at 6:54 PM, greg396 said:

Dear Armbian-Enthusiasts!

 

I would like to install Armbian with Virtualbox, so that I can run Home Assistant (HA) in a VM environment (Intel chip .vdi) - yes, no container.

 

Would chose this image  "Armbian 25.11.1 Minimal / IOT 6.1 kernel" (rolling release)

 

Installing Virtualbox with:

sudo apt install virtualbox

 

Is this possible?

 

Best wishes, Greg

 

Running Armbian in VirtualBox with Home Assistant can be tricky, especially with networking and hardware passthrough. Ensuring proper VM resource allocation and using bridged networking usually helps. If you’re experimenting with hardware-level integrations, devices like EPF10K50RI240-4N are FPGA-based solutions that offer flexible logic control in embedded setups, which can be useful in advanced configurations.

Links:

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/linux/

https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox

https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-5-plus/

 

Running VirtualBox on Armbian is generally not a good fit for what you’re trying to do. Armbian is primarily designed for ARM-based single-board computers, and VirtualBox is built with x86 hosts in mind and relies on kernel modules that are not well-supported (or sometimes not available at all) on ARM kernels like the one in your chosen Armbian image. Even if you manage to install the package, it’s very likely you’ll run into missing kernel module issues or lack of hardware virtualization support, especially on boards like the Orange Pi 5 Plus.

If your goal is to run Home Assistant without containers, a more reliable approach would be to either run Home Assistant OS directly on supported hardware, or use a lightweight hypervisor that works well on ARM (such as KVM/QEMU, if your board and kernel support it). Alternatively, if you specifically want VirtualBox, you’ll have a much smoother experience running it on a standard x86 Debian/Ubuntu system rather than Armbian.

Edited 1 hour ago by DavidFajardo

[Igor]

52 minutes ago, DavidFajardo said:

Running VirtualBox on Armbian is generally not a good fit for what you’re trying to do. Armbian is primarily designed for ARM-based single-board computers, and VirtualBox is built with x86 hosts in mind and relies on kernel modules that are not well-supported (or sometimes not available at all) on ARM kernels like the one in your chosen Armbian image.

 

Generic aarch64 or x86 image has all needed support for most comon virtual environments. On a side we provide cloud images, optimized to run inside KVM / QEMU virtualized environment - super lean kernel.

https://armbian.com/boards/uefi-arm64
https://armbian.com/boards/uefi-x86

Look for cloud kernel images.

 

52 minutes ago, DavidFajardo said:

especially on boards like the Orange Pi 5 Plus.

 

Here it can only be a problem if host (Orangepi) supports qemu or not. I don't run it here but I think it must just work.

 

52 minutes ago, DavidFajardo said:

if you specifically want VirtualBox, you’ll have a much smoother experience running it on a standard x86 Debian/Ubuntu system rather than Armbian.

There won't be any difference compared to standard Debian / Ubuntu. Armbian is more polished in general, comes with several important improvements.

Securing support for virtual targets is relatively easy compared to any custom hardware. And this was done long time ago. We use Armbian UEFI and QCOW2 virtual images to drive our infrastructur and also automated testing, but of course we target KVM / Quemu not Virtualbox. Which anyway can run normal image. Our runners and cloud services mainly run Armbian Noble cloud.

Our website (dual core x86 vps):

 

www:/boot:% du -h vmlinuz-6.18.10-cloud-x86
15M    vmlinuz-6.18.10-cloud-x86

+ 17M for modules (normal image has 150-200M for modules, for things you never need in virtualized environment)
 

 

52 minutes ago, DavidFajardo said:

If your goal is to run Home Assistant without containers, a more reliable approach would be to either run Home Assistant OS directly on supported hardware, or use a lightweight hypervisor that works well on ARM (such as KVM/QEMU

Yep, that's the best path for this use case.