its needed “only for the nabu casa backups” because they are part of the release, everything else launched could function perfectly fine without encryption and cloud backup. i.e the user base would not have lost any functionality they already had but gained additional functionality. Is it needed functionality in general? absolutely its just came out too soon.
Backup encryption and nabu casa backups, could have come out as a separate release in 2024.2 or later which would have given the dev’s time to look at the feedback from beta and develop a better approach i.e. allow encryption to be disabled when required by the user, make it mandatory for certain destinations, or build the decrypt utility.
In fact i believe encryption could have (and probably should have) launched as an optional feature as part of 2024.1 if not for:
the effort required to build nabu casa cloud backups code and infrastructure
the absolute requirement that anything going into their cloud be encrypted with a key they don’t have access to (which is a totally valid requirement, i would expect an even bigger backlash if they launched nabu casa backups without it)
force encryption without decryption tool is very stupid
True. This (an offline, standalone decryption tool) is actually something that we do need, and we need it soon. Some people were mentioning a python tool already exists, but I am not sure what tool they were referring to.
And in this context (forced encryption without a dedicated decryption tool) I will even agree with the “stupid” term
Reading the announcement I assumed that I could at least specify a network location (e.g. samba share).
But there does not seem to be an “add location” button anywhere?
Settings / System / Storage / Add network storage. Once you add your network storage location, you will be able to reference it for the backups.
Maybe it’s because of the containerized environment…
True, the external storage feature is only for HAssOS . But as the comments there say, if you are in containers, you can just mount any remote directory anywhere you wish inside the container - the sky is the limit
I am backing up with Add-on: Home Assistant Google Drive Backup will that continue to work as it has done until now?
And will the content of the backup stay the way it used to be unencrypted and with filenames that tell what component it comes from?
From my side all was said in other topic already. Just a conclusion: from 2025 version “backup” function is dead for me until “stupid” mandatory encryption is removed. I’ll find another way for this.
Just one light at the end of the tunnel: samba backup addon still works (so far…).
On my testsystem Google Drive backup is unencrypted and working as before and also backup from the commandline is possible to do unencrypted.
Automatic backups in HA and to Nabucasa is encrypted.
I configured the new Backup to only go to Cloud yesterday (10d retention, approx 300MB each) and am grateful for this valuable addition. Currently, as said in the ReleaseParty, the Nabu Cloud is the Backup of last resort and in my HA the existing SMB backup/purge Automation stays in place with 30d retention (good 10GB currently).
Super valuable extensions in my view would be the ability to
select the retention per Backup target (Cloud space constraints, see above)
select encryption per Backup target (encryption is mandatory for cloud in my view)
change the time of the backup
With SMB (unencrypted) I can browse and use the “Select what to restore”, I do not understand why browsing Cloud Backup from the HA GUI thows an “Unknown error”, shouldn’t it have the key …
Anyway - Rome wasn’t been built in a day - a very good start and as all existing Backup arrangements still work unchanged nothing should be broken.
Same idea from my side, automatic backup is a good idea, but the timing must be flexible, for example I made my backup on a NAS that is shut off for the night!
In this way I can’t use automatic backup
Do we have the ability to browse encrypted backups and only restores say a single file (assuming you have the key of course)? That’s by far my biggest issue with the current system as I’ve had the Google drive backup addon forever and it is incredibly good (in fact I think still might be better than this new builtin offering though it’s def a good thing new users won’t need a special addon).
I do agree, with may others.
The encryption on all backups is really daft, not being able to have the option to extract the contents is a step too far.
Just as an idea why not give the MANUAL setting an option to discard the encryption, this would then give you at least an option to check and see the content.
The way it is now feels incredible uncomfortable and vulnerable if I can’t be sure I can check the content and replace small portions and it would be useful if this addition was at least reversible in the core update.
The question is now, what should I do?
I think the answer is to reject this update until the Backup has been altered with options based on a user preference as I feel handcuffed with this version.
