Although it turned out that users’ complains are simply ignored (check new PRs, currently more domains getting these shiny & more-or-less useless more-info windows), I will post this anyway.
Check this more-info window for a “restored” entity - now the “Delete” button is hidden, a challenge for beginners:
Since this cannot be considered as a bug, created a post in Discussions.
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HA crashed while doing the most recent xx.5 update and now won’t start.
Halp!!
I had the Create Backup option ticked. Is there any way to roll back from the console ?
Ok i managed. Command was
ha backups restore [slugname]
I thankfully had a full backup from early febuary and am working my way restoring the partials backups i have until core_2023.3.3 – which i’ll stick to.
Still I lost a bunch of customization i spent hours creating. Moral of the story: Don’t upgrade.
Not really, if anything just do a backup before upgrading. But many users upgrade smoothly and never have issues like you experienced.
I did.
I thought the “create backup” option created, well, a usable backup – but turns out it’s only a partial backup that can’t be restored as is - at least it didn’t allow me to. So i had to rollback even further to a full backup i thankfully did 6 weeks ago, but that one has overwritten all my configs and customizations i made since.
HA was working fine, i didn’t need to upgrade and now i regret that i did.
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There are plenty of people on 2023.3.5 who’s updates went smooth, so stop spreading FUD.
Your system had an error, but that doesn’t make it universal.
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I fixed your mistake above.
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HA is free software built for free by volunteers and I get that. I love it and really and i’m super grateful for a self-hosted IOT system.
It’s a bit quirky tho. I’ve only been using HA for two months. Perhaps those quirks are common knowledge for experienced users – and i did read the strong suggestions to create a backup before updating which, again, I thought i was doing. Given that the option is located in the core update confirmation dialog, one could reasonably expect that it will, in fact, backup the system.
Can we agree that this option is misleading ? It lulled me into a false sense of security when in reality it is *not* a full backup.
And yes i am aware this is not the current version but the dialog is the same. i picked a screenshot online as HA is somehow updated to 2023.3.5 now while i left it at 2023.3.3 which at this point i’m just not going to question how
I am not using hyperbole when i say i lost a lot of time – most of my customizations i did after that full backup i manually triggered early on. I was happy with my setup, but now i have to basically start over so apologies for the frustration in my previous posts.
You do know that it only backs up what it is updating only, right? Otherwise go into settings and do the backup there
This “backups issues” were one of reasons I decided not to use Home Assistant OS - now using HA in docker successfully. For me a default backuping is too confusing. And backup with container is very simple: either copy the whole HA folder (with db) or the HA folder w/o db-file.
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- Full Backup.
- Read the “breaking changes”.
- Upgrade.
Problem solved.
P.S. - TURN OFF auto upgrades on all Add Ons.
I am pretty sure that a core backup backs up all customizations.
@stevemann I also check the breaking changes. Really it’s the backup thing i was apparently expected to know beforehand that it was only backing up the files it touches. You can bet that i know now.
@nickrout it did a partial for me
I think nickrout meant that the whole config directory is in the backup. So that should still have your customizations somewhere. You should be able to find them by manually extracting the backup tar file.
But yeah, the backup checkbox kind of gives a false sense of security. As you think all is OK because you made backups, but when you need it it turns out to be not what you need. The dialog does say “Home Assistant Core”, but that is easy to miss and then you still need to remember/realize how HA is structured with HA OS/Core.
A bit more guidance from HA would be nice as backups seem easy to do in the UI but has some gotchas. Maybe a built in/default periodic full backup automation or a notification/repair when fullbackup was a long time ago or you cleaned up all full backups to save diskspace… 
Thanks to @Michel 's comment above i found and opened my last 2023.3.3 backup tar and indeed my configs are in there so figured i’d try to restore it, and …
This is not my IP. From the looks of it it fails trying to fetch a docker image but in short, even that backup is borked and crashes my system.
This time around i knew how to recover from that so i restored my febuary 1st full backup again and this time around i systematically restored every partial core backups i had and stopped short of the broken x.3.3 and lo and behold, i have all my customizations although go2rtc refuses to start (outputs no logs Edit: Host reboot fixed it) and astroweather doesn’t recognize the location entity but still this is miles better than earlier.
I now have a better understanding of how the HA backups work. I 'll definitely trigger a manual full backup next time
Anyone else notice odd entities created automatically as part of the upgrades to the ONVIF Integration?
Some of my dome cameras have a white LED that can be turned on for extra illumination at night but these have not been added with the upgrade, instead I got wiper controls… but the cameras don’t have wipers. None of the automatically added switches turn the white LED on.
EDIT: There is already an issue created for this on Github.
That’s why I’m doing scheduled backups on a daily basis (full or partial fitting to the needs).
To go one step further you can copy them to a samba share, there is a good addon for that.
No more worries when hitting the update button 
There is also a google drive backup addon, which is superb.
Both of those are fantastic add-ons. I’ve used both and they’re well written, well documented and well supported. Kudos to the developers.
Still, they only copy the backup to external storage. The only place HA can create a backup is on the drive it’s running from. That isn’t a good place for it. When you need to restore, chances are that drive will not be easily accessible. I’d much rather see HA offer the option to create the backup on external storage to begin with, where it would be available during the restore. This is especially true if you’re using an SD card to run HA. Frequent backups only invite disaster.
My solution is to only back up the config share to my NAS via SAMBA, as part of my routine backups. That contains all the configuration and the database. I only bother running a full HA backup prior to updating, and even that is probably unnecessary.
That makes no sense. Copying to or creating on the external drive it still ends up in the same place. And access is easy, you can restore the backup file directly from your web browser if you have an install with a supervisor.
I don’t really understand the discussion here, because it is just always the same topic: How you setup your system.
HA is designed to run on a very simple setup - such as an RPI.
Therefore, it provides a very basic backup option - designed for that particular purpose:
Run HA on an RPI, create a backup - store it locally, and in case - you can easily setup a new installation and restore the previous backup…
If you REALLY want to use more advanced options - you should consider to plan your installation in such a way.
For example, use a Proxmox server, Run a VM with HA OS - create your backups through Proxmox on an external storage…
The same applies for the recorder and so on…
To allow HA creating backups on an external storage, you need to:
- mount this device within HA
- access that drive when HA will fail
- but if you have a failed HA, you need other options on access the storage and recover the backup.
in my opinion, backups that are created by the application that should be restored are always limited in some places and options.
Therefore, I would recommend to use external backup options (as mentioned, let proxmox backup the whole VM)…
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