2025.1: Backing Up into 2025!

[baz123 (Brian)]

@allard77

By introducing this you sent a message (intentional or not) that choice doesn’t actually matter to the HA dev team, but you know better what is good for users than the users do themselves. This, in my opinion, is what evoked the strong reactions.

Spot on

[tom_l]

@Tryfos

I have yet to understand why it was removed to begin with.

The new system is incapable of tracking these backups for cleanup and it was feared that people would not realise their disk was filling up.

[Tryfos]

So, instead of introducing a simple system to monitor disk space and warn accordingly, it was arbitrarily decided that it’s better for the user not to backup before a (major) update and risk losing months (or even years) of work? How does this even make any sense?

[tom_l]

[iDevice]

That’s exactly what I don’t understand, why would the system be incapable to track these backups if they are put in the “automatic” category ?
Because they would not be “manual” as they would be “automatically” be done before any update without any “manual” user intervention, right ?

[tom_l]

You’re asking the wrong person. I have no idea what motivated the design choices.

[maxym]

I suggest to move database and logs to cloud in order to definitively resource no disk space issue

[Richi_Bowzer]

I think a simple disclaimer from the team on turning encyption off will cover them…

Warning! Turning off encryption will remove the function of being able to upload a backup to nabucasa.

this way nabucasa is fully covering themselves, why its a great feature for most as Bob mentioned Some of us backup to system and to nas, then nas files are encrypted and sent to a off site nas. I back up every few days but I do like to backup addons esecially with zigbee2mqtt…

not sure maybe a way to be selective with what addons have the choice of backups (i mean in general most addon updates are not potention system breaking and only thing that has ever broken for me in addons even before the 2.0 update was zigbee2mqtt)

[Richi_Bowzer]

have you ever looked at how many files are in a back up and how compressed it is I think they are pretty quick considering the amount of files inside, its not just fresh install moment on windows type of scenario lol.

[Gurulee (Lee)]

I’ve been holding off upgrading for this exact reason and any other unexpected breaking changes…

[petro]

There would be errors in your logs letting you know why this happened. If you create a separate post, you’ll likely get help fixing the issues.

This type of issue rarely happens unless you have an invalid configuration. Are you sure there hasn’t been warnings in your logs prior to this update, telling you that you need to fix something?

[MB1983k (Michael)]

Which log file should I check for this??? I have never encountered issues at least for my sensors (but also did not check the log files as it is working)

[petro]

homeassistant.log, in your configuration folder.

[MB1983k (Michael)]

Thanks - will check it!

[petro]

Actually, the encryption in HA uses Securetar , which uses python’s cryptography library. Cryptography is not rolled by the community or the HA developers. Many people use this and it’s a proven library that works, they aren’t rolling their own encryption. This quite simply is a bug in securetar that needs to be fixed, nothing more.

[Caligo]

Just wanted to chime in a bit later. After it was confirmed that custom backup solutions were untouched by the new mandatory encryption I took the plunge with 2025.1.1.
What can I say - it is all working. My first autobackup went smooth as well. Unencrypted.

I think in our first shock (not reading the small print) we might have overreacted a bit.

I really hope:

• that encryption can be optional within the inbuilt backup tool
• that schedules can be more flexible
• that an optional (not default) backup before update system could be reimplemented
• that custom backup tools keep working

Many thanks in advance!

[stevemann (Stephen Mann (YAML-challenged))]

@maxym

I suggest to move database and logs to cloud in order to definitively resource no disk space issue

You don’t run Frigate, do you?

[orange-assistant (the real one)]

@Frank_Beetz

Can somebody bring a good reason why a file that lives on my SSD, in my house should be encrypted?

If it does contain any sensitive or private information it should be encrypted. This could be for example passwords/secrets like mentioned in the blog post.

Your backups not only contain the access credentials to your smart home devices but also the history of your home, and no one should be able to access information that sensitive! Ever!

You will find that any modern OS will (mostly by default) offer you an encrypted installation - and this is what one should do in 2025. Having for example a laptop, phone or usb sticks containing private without encryption is something negligent because they can easily disappear (and appear again?). For companies based in the EU encryption is mostly mandatory if they process any personal data.

@Frank_Beetz

a file that lives on my SSD, in my house should be encrypted?

Also talking flash here you might want to use encryption actually for the pure reason not being able to (really) delete data (contained in flash cells) anymore like we could do in the old times on hard disks due to the nature how flash storage works.

Beside you might think the controller in the SSD that is “good enough” for the encryption - but we know better today: Self-Encrypting Solid-State Drive Vulnerabilities | CISA (most serious OSes actually also disable this hardware ssd encryption function by default).

@Frank_Beetz

Maybe we just don’t see the value

Yes, it’s a abstract thing. I know people that used unencrypted/open WIFI and said it’s all they need and it’s easier for them because they don’t need to remember a password.

It’s very difficult to argue to people that only see the hassles (need to remember a password) and don’t see anything visible improved (an encrypted WIFI doesn’t have visible benefits to a open WIFI for a user till the moment…)

[tom_l]

Sigh. We are not over reacting. And I’m betting you would be a bit more annoyed if you understood the actual issues, Read this for quick summary: 2025.1: Backing Up into 2025! - #568 by tom_l

Sure you can use your existing backup method - for now. It will eventually be depreciated though and we would like to see this dogs breakfast fixed before that happens.

[petro]

Tom, I think you’re still taking that out of context.

3…2…1… Backup

There has been no mention of deprecating any of the hassio service calls, there hasn’t even been a hint of that. At this point, it’s people just starting rumors. The only phrase that has been said about deprecating anything, is a potential deprectation of behind the services (not to be confused with HA Actions/Services) that addons use to create backups, and that deprecation will only occur when a replacement service is provided. And that’s directly from the quote when I asked a question duri…

The exact quote that you keep going back to that started the “deprecation of addons”, mentions having a replacement before that happens. I.e. Moving from the supervisor to being in core, which still supports unencrypted backups.

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Not speaking about overreaction, only about the “deprecation of the handlers” that custom addons use.