Are you guys running the latest version of HACS?. There have been 2 updates this year. The version on my system is 2.0.3.
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Yep, just updated today 2.0.3
You discovered the Y2K+25 bug!!
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I have to say that in all the last (about) seven years this is the first time Iāve been āafraidā to upgrade. In the past Iāve seen breaking changes that made me wait and not do so immediately and a couple of times I have wished I had waited but Iāve never consciously not upgraded within at least a week.
The reason for the āfearā was primarily the backup issues, which whilst I donāt agree with the direction I am now totally happy wonāt directly affect me, but I am concerned about the stories of HACS ābreakingā and of the problems I have seen reported with card-mod which for me would be a massive issue.
My problem is that here is so much noise around this release that finding details on specific issues is hard - and I donāt mean noise in a derogatory sense, more like being in a room full of people and not being able to find the conversation that interests you.
Iāve said my bit about the comms from āon-highā but I do think that a lot of the noise could have been prevented by it being quicker and better.
The backup question is huge but whilst everyoneās view is legitimate, really only a few unique points have been made in the 1200 posts, to the detriment of other issues, concerns and, letās not forget, favourable comments (e.g. zoom and pan for charts).
Soā¦
Any guidance on card-mod would be hugely well received (just where best to look for answers, I donāt expect hand holding!) as well as any views on HACS e.g. are those with issues outliers in the same way that it happens with some things on every release?
And yes, I see the irony that I can always revert from my automation created backups but frankly, backup restore is never a good planned-for option.
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Missy, thanks for taking the time to read the posts and providing what answers you can. This situation sucks for all of us, and I bet the dev team donāt find it particularly funny either. FWIW Iām in the āno malice intendedā camp, and itās a shame all the nice features of the release are buried in the backup conondrum.
The following is meant as an explanation of why the reactions are so strong, rather than a complaint, so I hope it will be taken in good faith ā I hope it wll be taken as such 
.
Butā¦ I read the message currently being sent it ābe patient, we are making changesā, and that seems to me to be the core of what went wrong with the updates. Thereās no indication of how the community feedback is being interpreted, thereās no indication what direction is being taken, and it feeds into the damaging āus vs themā narrative a few community members seem to be pushing. But being kept in uncertainty sucks!
As @CaptTom says, if somebody representing the dev team could either say āWe hear you, and are working on a plan to bring back unencrypted local backups and backup-before-addon-update, but it requires some architectural planningā, or the less positive āNeither of those features are coming backup, this is the wayā that would go a long way.
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I want to add something to this post, as it has had 54 likes. I want to pull back some of what I said.
My comments were based on my understanding (14 days ago) that there were no unencrypted backups available at all anymore. It has turned out that there obviously are, and that existing backup strategies will continue to work (by and large).
I still have my criticisms, but my much liked post was perhaps a little harsh.
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I have used this release since Beta 0 and have not seen any issues with system or any truly HACS issues. I have seen others report them but none effected me. On one integration (NOAA tides) there has been a warning in the logs of a coming changes for over six months that would cause it to not work. This was fixed by users of the custom integration and the original author.
This isnāt a HACS or system issue but caused by a known about system change that if ignored would stop integrations from working. I would be interested in seeing the logs of the people that are having HACS issues. Are they using the latest HACS? Did they ignore warnings?
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Your existing automatic (EDIT: as per Petroās posts) backup mechanism remains unaffected. The backup functionality is not a breaking change.
The HACS issue has a solution too. It was pretty easy to fix.
Ditto for card-mod. If you have the problematic 3.5.0 version, itās been pulled. Remove it and install 3.4.4.
The first is a non-issue and the other two are custom components that come with their risks.
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OK, I think a reality check is in order here. There have been a couple of statements about the previous backup strategy still working without change.
I havenāt installed 2025.1.x yet, so maybe someone can enlighten me. My backup strategy has been through Settings / System / Backups, then Create Backup. Iād give it a name, chose Full or Partial, then leave Password Protection un-checked.
Are you saying I can still do that in 2025.1.x?
I thought Iād read that the encryption (or not) option had been removed. If thatās not true then I have some apologies to make, too.
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No, automatic backup strategies prior to 2025.1.x work the same. Using the UI is a manual backup strategy.
Please refer to my post above for details:
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I believe, and have proven to myself multiple times, that backup restore is always a good planned-for option. And I wish others would believe that too.
Thanks to routine testing of my backup restore strategy, I never worry about any failure in my system including if my restore process will work.
Itās a good last resort yes of course it is but is never an excuse to not do everything possible first to not need it.
Thatās what I meant.
To be honest after I posted it I expected a reply with your message a lot sooner but couldnāt be bothered to edit my post to make it clearer.
Itās actually ābe patient, we are deciding what the path forward is and I will notify you when I have that informationā.
So please, be patient and wait for a response from @MissyQ. Reiterating a request for more information isnāt going to make the information arrive more quickly.
Also, keep in mind that you replied to @MissyQ on a weekend outside work hours. Do not expect a reply before Monday 9AM PST. I also want to be clear, me saying 9AM PST does not imply you will get a reply at that time either.
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Agree but doing āeverything possibleā doesnāt always guarantee perfection.
No. And this may be the reason for so much vitriol about the āoverhauledā backups.
Samba backup and Google backup are unchanged.
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Thank you, thatās what I understood from yours and other previous posts.
I was wondering if I misunderstood, after seeing people post that previous backup strategies still work and this change is no big deal.
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previous automated backup strategies still work
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Right, thatās fair. I got the impression a new release was implied, rather than e.g. changes to process or community involvement. I probably misread / read too much into sentences fragments like āshare what we have been working onā, ācontinue being patient with us while we finalize things.ā, āworking on good solutionsā, āchanges will be rolled outā. (Listing those is not meant to be bickering, but āhey, I might have misunderstood the communication, these were triggers for thatā).
My post was mainly meant to clarify reactions to this whole situation, and well-meant suggestion how to avoid a similar shitstorm in the future, not as āGIVE INFORMATION NOWā. Iām aware it can easily be read that way, especially in a time of friction and fatigue.
And that is entirely fair, I hope nobody expects people to work during weekends. And I appreciate you being explicit about ādonāt expect before, and no guranteeā ā yes, that should be obvious, but I believe the reason this thing exploded is communication breakdown (which isnāt any one sideās fault!), so I genuinely appreciate it.
I respect that the development team want to think things through, and possibly have some internal disagreemnts to settle, before presenting it to the outside world. However, it would be nice to have one-sentence āthe two features will be added backā or āneither will come backā before the full response is polished. That would allow the rest of us to either plan for changes we need to do, or avoid wasting time. Anyway, thatās just a suggestion, not a demand.
Have a nice weekend, @petro! (And the rest of the moderation, admin and dev team 
)
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Its number 1 with a bullet.
Numbers two and three are
Broke standard Dr practices (must always have an easily accessible backup - encryption I canāt trust fails this) and then framed it in our language as if they understood. (1,2,3 is backup terminology)
And used a library for the encryption many of us donātā¦ Agree with. Let me leave it at that. (floating boaters argument.)
Those two together get the hackles of BOTH your infosec and ops guysā¦ The add the lack of turning it off and we flame onā¦ (doubling down on turning it off harder in the patch release didnāt help, makes the team seem tone deaf even though theyāre. Really not)
Thank you for herding the cats Missyā¦ Thatās all I can say about it anymore.
Waiting as patiently as I canā¦
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Itās actually ābe patient, we are deciding what the path forward is and I will notify you when I have that informationā.
When decisions like this are made, could we please avoid being dismissive to the point where the actual user experience with Home Assistant is overlooked? Itās especially disappointing to see this coming from Paulus in his response on GitHub.
The lack of acknowledgment of how users are actively engaging with the platform undermines the communityās trust and input. To compound the issue, the thread was prematurely closed as ācompleted,ā which leaves little room for meaningful discussion or follow-up.
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