Attempt to restore from tar backup, but refused as not "Home Assistant backup file" tar

Installation
1

Good evening. My RasPi 4 died after 5 years. I replaced it with a Beelink S12 Intel box. I loaded and dedicated to Home Assistant OS 12.2.

From my old RasPi 4, I have proper .tar backup files I believe.
The backups went to my local NAS, and have nine large and 14 small files.
They are not password protected.
7z opens it just fine and can see 024bd961.tar\homeassistant.tar.gz\homeassistant.tar\data
The tar file is local to the web browser, so no networking issue there.
I never clicked into CREATE MY SMART HOME. Do I have to on a clean install if I am just restoring?

When attempting to restore the backup to a clean install, I get the error Unsupported file format

Any suggestions?

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I still have the old RasPi 4 drive, as it is an SSD, and could hang it off of the new system. In case the backups are damaged, is there a way to create a valid, restorable backup from the drive?

Also, how can I tell which file is a backup I have backups that are 10K and some that are 300M. all are .tar, and all are 8 character hex file names.

2

Open it with a compression tool and see the content.
Winzip, WinRAR or 7-zip can be used on Windows and Mac probably have similar.
The content should be several more tar files and one of these should be named homeassistant.

I had issue earlier with backups where it crashed under the backup of InfluxDBobno homeassistant.tar existed on the backups Even though the seemed like the backups was successful.

3

Thanks.

Got it. The files I am uploading are in the above construct, with homeassistant.tar in it. So those are the backups.

This removes one possibility why it is failing with the restore.

Any other thoughts?

Also, anyone attempted to restore it directly on the HAOS device? I can copy the .tar to a USB and attempt to restore using the ha command line.

4

Only one I can think of is that sometimes the browser downloads and uploads the files as text instead of binary.
When that happens it might convert Newline to Newline + Carriage Return or vice versa and that destroys a binary file.

5

Thank you.

Unlikely, but I am going to try another browser, and also local upload if that fails.

Anyone else ran into the same issues?

6

Update -

I use Firefox 125.0.3 (64-bit) by default.

Switched to Chrome Version 124.0.6367.119 (Official Build) (64-bit).

The restore worked.

I believe most things are back up. I will wait for things to settle, then full backup. :smiley:

Thank you!

Add-ons - Do add-ons not get backed up? Asking because for now, all appears to be gone.

1 Like
7

Remember to restart the host after the restore, not just the core.

8

Thanks.

Hardware reboot did not work. But, when reinstall add-on, all configurations remained.

9

Just walked into this issue myself. Tried Chrome over Firefox, and the restore works as expected.

4 Likes
10

Awesome this worked!

Using Edge (chromium based) solved the issue which was indeed occurring on Firefox on Windows 11.

11

Just wanted to mention to any future users that I had this same problem and this fixed it. Something in firefox breaks uploading the backup.

12

Thanks, could upload it with edge. Got denied on firefox

13

It’s a real shame that the first step in re-installing Home Assistant is only compatible with Chrome and not Firefox… From a software that tries to avoid being dependent on the cloud and data sharing… :expressionless:
Thank you for the tips.

14

Did anybody file a bug for this already?

15

It was already filed here in 2022 (the stupid stalebot closed it, of course without fix; it is extremely rare that software fixes itself…):

I filed a new issue here:

16

While i have used firefox for years, i have seen is quite obsolete.

  • I recently flashed some old xioami temp/humidity sensors, needed chrome/edge
  • I got some ESP32 and set them as BT proxy, it also required chrome/edge

It says: “This page requires a browser that supports WebSerial. Please open this website on your desktop using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.”

Alternatives tested:

  • Opera works
  • Brave works (this may be suited for your needs)

Not related to HA at all but i have also faced issues with firefox and many other sites, specially banking/taxes.

Still, I just do my everything life in firefox and have edge/chrome for when thing goes south.