S6 Overlay for our Docker containers
Home Assistant uses a lot of different Docker containers for all kinds of purposes. Not only the Home Assistant Core that is available as Docker containers but also our Supervisor and all add-ons are leveraging Docker.
In many situations, we need to run multiple processes in our containers, that all need to be managed. We used to do this using simple Bash scripting, but quickly learned we need a proper process manager to handle this.
We decided to use the S6 Overlay init system, which is based on the excellent S6 toolset that provides process supervision and management, logging, and system initialization.
The S6 Overlay has been added to our Docker base images, which is used by every Docker image Home Assistant ships.
All containers have been updated, and changes are automatically handled by the Home Assistant Supervisor; For Home Assistant users, there is no noticeable impact.
For users of the Home Assistant Core containers on Docker, this might impact the way you run or start the container. If you run your Home Assistant Core container with an override of the Docker entry point or command, you need to adapt those. For example, some container management systems, like Portainer and Synology, automatically override those for you so you are impacted.
In those cases:
- The entry point has changed to:
/init - The command (CMD) has changed to:
If you override the command endpoint to start Home Assistant, the init system in the entry point will still be active in the background and a second launch Home Assistant. This can lead to unexpected behavior.