2025.1: Backing Up into 2025!

[mattius (Matt Inglis)]

I understand things take time, but it would be nice if we could have a clarified position on things.

E.g. hopefully, we are working on unencrypted backups and will get back to you.

Currently people are being left in limbo.

You removed their backups options and have left users at risk.

Do I create my own backup strategy and ignore everything ha does?
Or do I wait in the vain hope people are listening

I’m currently backupless and in that predicament

This is vastly becoming the hottest topic of all times on the community and it deserves respect and commitment.

[MissyQ (Missy Quarry)]

I cannot give an answer in which I have no solid answer for. That will set expectations that are already varied - I do not want to (nor will I) say something that may end up biting us in the ass.

I acknowledged this wouldn’t be enough for some but I’d rather give something than radio silence - and I will absolutely come back around to share what we have been working on. Sorry that isn’t gonna come faster for y’all - all I can ask is that you continue being patient with us while we finalize things.

[ludeeus]

This is fixed in HACS 2.0.3
There was an issue with checking if the version was valid for older versions of a repository.

[tc23]

Feels like Devs went to the Winchester, had a pint, and are waiting for this whole thing to blow over.

[CaptTom (Tom)]

Thank you again for taking the time to respond. I do appreciate that you’re in the uncomfortable position as the spokesperson who can’t say anything. You said the concerns here have been heard, and I believe you. I only reply in the hope that they’re not being misinterpreted. Without feedback, it’s hard to know.

I also got the message loud and clear that either these decisions haven’t been made yet, or maybe they have been made but the decision on how to break the bad news to the community hasn’t been made yet. I think you can understand how this can be unsettling.

I’ll try to be patient. We need to put this behind us.

[123 (Taras)]

@mattius

You removed their backups and have left users at risk

?

1. Backup files were not removed.
2. 2025.1.X has not removed the ability to perform a backup operation.

@mattius

Do I create my own backup strategy and ignore everything ha does?

That’s your choice. Use the built-in Backup feature (that can now be scheduled to perform automatic backups) or pick a third-party solution.

@mattius

I’m currently backupless and in that predicament

It appears that it’s a consequence of your choice to not use the built-in Backup feature (or anything else).

[mattius (Matt Inglis)]

1 & 2. Backups functionality was removed, the backup on update option was removed. So now by default the system doesn’t backup, previously I got a backup each update, which lets face it is by far the most critical time, especially if recent releases are anything to go by.

So I now have to go create my own strategy.

I cannot use the built-in backup feature for most of the 1000 reasons above state.

E.g. it’s encrypted, I can’t restore what I want from it.
My backups are too big for nabu casa etc etc

The whole ethos of home assistant for the last few years has been to move away from the scripting and move to the UI.
Now we are being told to move back to scripting because we don’t comply with a narrow set of rules which someone has naively thought up, e.g. a backup will never be more than 5gb, no one will want to extract just a yaml file.

[nickrout]

Thanks to useful people like @123 there are alternatives to some of this

Simple UI for making backups of Add-ons

If you normally make a backup of an Add-on before upgrading it, you might be interested in the following application that simplifies the process. 1 Create the following Template Select and Trigger-based Template Sensor entities. The select entity will automatically populate itself with the names of add_ons associated with the Supervisor integration.

select.add_ons, sensor.add_ons_selection

template: - trigger: - platform: event event_type: custom_add_ons_selection sensor: …

[123 (Taras)]

@mattius

the backup on update option was removed

That’s a far more accurate, and true, statement than what you claimed originally:

You removed their backups and have left users at risk

You can make unencrypted full or partial backups using hassio.backup_full and hassio.backup_partial, respectively. Those actions can be used directly in Developer Tools → Actions or in a script (that you must create).

For my convenience, I made an application that lets me select an Add-on by its name from a dropdown list, then click a button to make a backup of it. I shared it with everyone in the link found in nickrout’s post (see post above). It can be used prior to upgrading an Add-on.

[mattius (Matt Inglis)]

They removed the backup functionality that users relied on for their backup strategies.

Which since 2015.1.2 has stopped people directly getting backups from the UI.

Happy now?

[123 (Taras)]

@mattius

Happy now?

Generally yes, just not when people make inaccurate claims.

Feel free to use what I created or use hassio.backup_partial (or some other way).

[mattius (Matt Inglis)]

Apologies not meaning to be misleading, just typing on phone and can be difficult to type it all accurately.

Maybe if they add an automation trigger

.on_homeassistant_update

Then we could reconstruct missing functionality.

It’s a massive loss

[MissyQ (Missy Quarry)]

I will say this much: I would not have posted if I had no confidence we were working on good solutions here. I very much believe we have proposed solutions that will be agreeable; I’m eager to share which is why I posted knowing it wasn’t a great follow up but wanted to make sure there was signal from our side that we continue to actively work on addressing y’all’s concerns.

[123 (Taras)]

No worries; all good now.

It remains to be seen how the next version will address the issue (of allowing for a convenient partial backup before upgrading an Add-on).

Currently, the availability of that partial backup makes it easy and convenient to rollback from a buggy Add-on upgrade. Maybe they’ll invent a way to rollback an Add-on that doesn’t even need a backup (pure speculation; I don’t know their plans).

[danieldeni]

@123

You can also use this action:

action: update.install
data:
  backup: true
target:
  entity_id: update.mosquitto_broker_update

Of course change the entity_id to the update. entity of that specific add-on.

It will make the old partial back-up of the add-on that was present before they removed the button. And directly afterwards updates the add-on. I’m guessing this is the service call that was handling the feature for backup on update.

There are no options to give for the backup: true, and it is unencrypted by default.

The target for storage will be the default set inside the Backup settings. If you have no SMB/NFS share it will default to /backup , or whatever you have set there.

One of the reasons I’ve read that this type of backup is no longer offered in the interface is that this feature doesn’t actually make a full back-up of the add-on and it’s data. It is just the Add-on itself without the mapped folders.

And if you do a partial restore of just the add-on from last nights Full backup, nothing is actually lost, as that data is not stored in the Add-on itself. This might be different per type of add-on.

[mattius (Matt Inglis)]

Can you call that for a home assistant core update too?

[danieldeni]

Yes, all entities exist:

action: update.install
data:
  backup: true
target:
  entity_id:
    - update.mosquitto_broker_update
    - update.home_assistant_core_update
    - update.home_assistant_operating_system_update
    - update.home_assistant_supervisor_update

You could even do multiple at once.

Since finding this action I’ve not had a core update yet to test what it does, but my guess is, it will do the same.

[123 (Taras)]

Thanks for sharing that.

BTW, I seem to recall the information contained within a partial backup of an Add-on contains the Add-on’s version. When restoring, it pulls the Add-on container matching the version.

Or at least that’s how it appeared to have behaved when I rolled back the Tailscale Add-on. Its partial backup didn’t contain anything more than two configuration files. Maybe I need to do an experiment …

[danieldeni]

Yeah, which is what I found out when I was inspecting what was actually in all those backups I had before with the OneDrive Backup Add-on. All those add-on backups were really small, which should tell you something haha.

So partial restoring the add-on from any Full back-up in the past days will restore the exact same part. Which seems fine now that I think of it.

Only outlier for my Add-ons is PLEX which stores the whole database and metadata inside the Add-on backup it seems. But if I lose a days worth of metadata, that doesn’t really matter as it will be generated automatically again.

The partial back-up is mainly important for update.home_assistant_core_update as that has saved me quite some times when an integration was broken with an update and I could fix it within 5mins of booting the broken version.

I don’t see a way to restore just HA Core itself, without touching any of the history so to not lose any data. I don’t want to lose a whole day of data if I need to restore to a backup from last night.

[edit]
Only way I can find is through CLI:
ha core update –version HA_VERSION_YOU_WISH.

For example:

ha core update --version 2024.12.4

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

@mattius

I cannot use the built-in backup feature for most of the 1000 reasons above state.

E.g. it’s encrypted, I can’t restore what I want from it.
My backups are too big for nabu casa etc etc

Then, don’t.

How were you backing up before 2025.1? That still works. That is still unencrypted.