2025.1: Backing Up into 2025!

[gonzotek]

No worries, it looked wrong to me too in the release notes at first, but I recalled them specifically mentioning milliwatts in the release livestream.

[123 (Taras)]

@madelena

best practice is to release early and get feedback first, rather than developing behind close doors for months without user feedback in the dark

With all due respect, appearances suggest this was developed “behind closed doors without user feedback”.

If user feedback was in fact solicited during its development, it must have come from a small group of test subjects … and they don’t seem to have the same concerns as this community. If that’s what happened then it may indicate a need to reassess the choice of test subjects.

@madelena

The more details the better! This will help guide the UX and help the team prioritize and develop the features correctly!

Exactly. Had this information been collected before the feature was developed, its eventual release would have made a more positive impression.

I’m not suggesting the first release needs to incorporate all suggestions; it can can still adhere to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) mantra, but at least incorporate the most common suggestions to ensure viability for most users. It’s clear from the feedback that this initial version fails the “viable” aspect of MVP for many users.

FWIW, I hope a future version will allow for disabling encryption. I don’t need or want it for local backups. Until then, I will stay with version 2024.12.X.

@madelena

• how often do you open your backup archives?
• What do you open it up for?
• How often do you need to restore your backups?

Rarely but when I did it was to inspect files to compare a previous configuration to the current one. The ability to do this easily (without the additional step of decrypting local files) was important at the time (busy fixing a frustrating bug).

So far I have only had to restore once and it was a previous version of an add-on (Tailscale). The process was easy and successful.

[baz123 (Brian)]

@123

If user feedback was in fact solicited during its development, it must have come from a small group of test subjects

Might have been worth approaching the developers of the current custom integrations. They will probably have been through much of the pain/feature requests already.

[templeton_nash]

I think that the new Backup system is a great first step towards a comprehensive backup system.

However, for the time being I shall stick with Google Drive Backup. Here’s why:

• Whilst I appreciate the storage provided - at no extra cost - by Nabu Casa, it’s not enough for me.
• Whilst I like the “3, 2, 1” system, I also want backups that go back in time. I want several recent backups and fewer older ones.
• I want to set the time when the backup happens. I’m not sure what impact the backup will have on system preformance or internet usage but, I want it nearer to midnight.
• I’m not overly concerned about the encryption but, being able to opt out would be good. Moreover, I need to be able to decrypt the backups and extract stuff from them easily.
• I have only ever restored a full backup when migrating to new hardware or testing my disaster recovery plan. More often, I’ve extracted individual files from backups when I have messed something up.
• I don’t think it’s a valid question to ask how often I might need to restore the whole system or restore individual files. It’s a bit like asking how often I’ve claimed on my home insurance or been saved by my seatbelt. (the answer is that I haven’t yet but I wouldn’t be comfortable without them.)

I’ve not upgraded to 2025.1 yet but, I wonder if someone can answer a question:

Will I still be able to backup add-ons before updating them? Today has been a problem with Zigbee2MQTT. I’ve had to restore back to the backup made when I first updated this (to 2.0.0) several times. Being able to just restore this add-on was invaluable. Is this still possible?

[guix77 (Guillaume Duveau)]

Zoom & pan on charts is

[Tryfos]

This update broke custom integration samsungtv-encrypted. In the HA logs it throws an error “Error doing job: Task exception was never retrieved (None)”, which is then repeated multiple times. I’ve posted an issue on GitHub Incompatible after 2025.1 · Issue #91 · sermayoral/ha-samsungtv-encrypted · GitHub but I know that this integration is no longer maintained and will not be fixed. If anyone has any idea they are welcome.

[Tekwyzard]

I think they probably meant to say ‘everywhere’.

[123 (Taras)]

It’s possible that this research was done but the MVP philosophy is to release something usable quickly and then improve upon it.

I hope the next improvement is the ability to selectively disable encryption.

[alrassia]

Is this the core integration or a custom one? Samsung is changing some things on smartthings that will impact new users as the pat tokens that are newly generated will only work for 24h.

A solution is in the works but not yet ready.

[arapaimas]

Hi,
I saw nothing in the release saying about ways to modify a card by editing it, but today, after the update, when i want to edit something on my dashboard i can’t.
I had a Yamaha network player that disapered completely and states of ram/cpu of my unifi AP’s are unavailable.
You should stop “improving” on thigs that are working well more more than 1 year.
I understand that things are evolving but you can’t jusr remove things because whatever.
Many pages are not working, inlcuding system: Error while loading page system.
We live in these houses.

[Tryfos]

Please see my above post 227 in relation to a (very old) custom Samsung integration. Could they be connected? Unfortunately I can’t use any other integration, since my 2015 pre-Tizen HU8500 is only supported by this integration.

[RKor (Rani)]

Same here, broke my ecowitt integration “Config flow could not be loaded: {“message”:“Invalid handler specified”}”

Find a solution yet?

[Tekwyzard]

• how often do you open your backup archives?
  Quite often, especially since discovering some years ago that one could, and thus access the individual files contained therein

• What do you open it up for?
  Usually to see how the heck I did something however long ago, or to undo something I’ve just messed up, like tweaking an automation, config file or whatever, then something doesn’t work properly, and I was an idiot with a goldfish grade memory; so into the most recent backup file I go, to copy and paste what worked back into my running configuration. Much quicker, and less destructive to data collected since the last backup, than messing about doing a full restore.

• How often do you need to restore your backups?
  Very often, especially recently, when so many basic things that used to work so reliably are now often broken in early releases. I’ve given up installing x.x.0 releases for this very reason, as I was spending so much time restoring what previously worked.

[Ildar_Gabdullin]

@Recte

Card-Mod changes might be effected by this update

Correct, checking commits in frontend now & trying to find what could cause this.
This thread is occupied by a new shiny backup feature, so no room for discussing other things (much less critical for sure).

[CaptTom (Tom)]

@Edwin_D

I’m not 100% sure, but previously if you added a network storage folder in settings and pick that as default backup storage, I think it is created there right away. At least I saw a file being opened there as soon as I start a backup. And there also was no local file.

This would be a change. The way I understood it to work was like this:

Feature Request: Backup Directly to External Storage

You would be correct in your assumption. The backup process uses the Linux TAR (short for “Tape ARchive”) command to take the contents of your config folder and database and consolidate into a single archive file. The TAR process, by its nature builds the file locally in a temp directory, and then will copy the completed file to its destination. Likewise, if it was using GZip compression (which at least looking at my backups HA is not), then the TAR process would take a second pass at the file t…

This may be a moot point for many, but in some implementations the amount of writes, and available storage, can be issues. It’s always best to understand how things really work, beyond what the UI is showing you.

[KevinCathcart]

Yeah, I agree.

My concerns with this new system include:

• Lack of “automatic” partial backups right before updates. This has saved me before.

• Lack of per location backup retention settings. Right now the default behavior looks to be that all enabled locations will have the same set of backups, unless an agent includes special logic to retain fewer, or the user manually deletes backups from underlying storage. If that is true, this feels screwy, because there is a very good chance the user may want different retention locally vs some cloud based agent.

  I supose a user can configure to retain all backups, and manually create automations to delete from different backends, but the system provides no real help with this. There is not even services to call get a list of backups for a specific agent, or delete from a specific agent. Indeed, there isnt even a an api or webservice call for deleteing from just one agent.

• Lack of long term retention flexibility. I want to be able to have several days of daily backups, several weeks of weekly backups, and like a year of monthly backups. This is easy with the google drive addon, but would require complex manual retention automations.

• Insufficent documentation about manual decryption.

[Recte]

I don’t think it is up to you to determine what this thread is about, other than the fact that you are the one filling the thread with irrelevant posts. Mine is informative for those who read the thread before upgrading, yours is redundant at best.

[Piregwan]

Meross integration seems not working since this update (humidity, temperature, MS310, MS210…)

I just used backups and Meross integration works again. So Meross Cloud ioT broken

[CordoWEB]

If encrypted backup is a very good idea, force encryption without decryption tool is not usable !

• What’s in the backup : I do not know
• How extract just one file ? It is not possible
• How verity the content of a backup : It is not possible

Without decryption tool or the choice to not encrypt backups, it is not a good idea to upgrade to this version

[lobolobo]

It´s your integration the HA native one?