It started when I bought a new IKEA smart device that supports Matter over Threads. Getting this up and running with my Home Assistant running on a Proxmox server should be easy, right? That was the original idea.
I ended up doing the following.
- Buy new anteanna for Threads and try to access it from a VM on Proxmox.
- I should probably upgrade Proxmox 8 to 9 before adding the anthenna?
- I should do a backup of all VMs on Proxmox (I am very glad I did this)
- Start upgrade - it fails. It does not boot - probably caused by a combination of secure boot and unsigned drivers that the proxmox installer warned me about. I don’t try to troubleshoot - I reinstall Proxmox 9 from scratch. This is actually a good thing, I got a few more settings proxmox settings right this time (better disk/filesystem)
- Move the Proxtmox server - if I clean up the server, why not improve its location as well.
- Restore VMs - this works very well.
- Add antenna, try to pair the IKEA device - It fails
Current status
Does the IKEA device work - Not yet
The Proxmox server is quicker and up to date
Backup routines for Proxmox VMs are tested and works
Cleaned up the the real world location of the Proxmox server
Looking at comments from the Home Assistant community, I am not the only one with this problem and I think the community will solve the issue in the future. The problem is not something I could fix alone.
In some ways this project was a failure, I did not reach the orginal goal (yet). The goal was unrealistic (for now), but the project improved my homelab in significant ways. I am happy with the preliminary results.