Backup password

I am trying to restore from an automatically generated backup but it wants a password. Which password is it wanting? I don’t recall having set a backup password.

Hi David, is this a backup that you have taken with HA v2025.1.x or prior to that?
Since that 2025.1.1, backups are encrypted with a key.

Presumably it wants the encryption key that was set when you enabled backups using the new backup system introduced in 2025.1. If you did not save that key, well you are screwed unless you still have backups prior to the new system.

Was there a an option to enable the new backup system,I don’t recall doing it?

I can restore backups made in Nov 24. Maybe I need to load 2025.1.x before I try to restore yesterday’s backup
?
Thanks

I had to ensure I had 2025.1.x loaded and then all was ok. Thanks for the answers.

The restore was needed because I tried to move data disk to a usb and the process failed.

No, this was introduced in 2025.1 as stated in my earlier answer.

You need the encryption key for that.

Just some feedback on this:
Please bring back unencrypted backups. Of course you want encryption in some usecases (cloudstorage, etc.) however it’s simply annoying for local backup/restore and that is a valid usecase as well.

There you go

Is the required encryption key for restoring from backups, the same that is found under System / Backups / Configure Backup Settings ?

It makes sense. But is kind of intriguing,

  • we’re used to setting our own passwords for Home Assistant, in this case, it is secretly generated,
  • and then asked of us without any hint of where it can be found,
  • and (at least in my case) when I try restoring using my known admin passwords from memory I get the cryptic error 'TarFile' object has no attribute 'slug', which is, well, not telling me that my password is the wrong one, so I thought the problem was something else…

This is not good… :frowning:

2 Likes

I actually have the same issue.

Everybody keeps telling how easy it is to change from device, given how easy a backup can be restored. Well the contrary is true.

I’m switching from VM on Synology to Rpi4 and the restoration of a backup doesn’t work at all.

"TarFile object has no attribute ‘slug’ "

I know my encryption key that I used for making the backup, but there is no way to tell HA to use it on the existing backup to be restored.

PS edit:

this has been solved by reflashing my SSD and instead of making a throwaway account, directly restoring the backup from the first login screen. Then the system asks for the old encryption key.

Thanks for your feedback. I’ve read several times that the restores work ok from a clean system, but that’s really unsatisfactory to me…

I had to simply revert an upgrade of an add-on, I don’t want to set up my whole Home assistant again… restores must work on installed systems, and partial restores must work…

Hi,
I tried to move to the new system but when I restored the backup having the error: “TarFile’ object has no attribute 'slug”
In supervisor log:

File "/usr/src/supervisor/supervisor/backups/manager.py", line 866, in do_restore_partial
    await self._validate_backup_location(backup, password, location)
  File "/usr/src/supervisor/supervisor/backups/manager.py", line 771, in _validate_backup_location
    await backup.validate_backup(location)
  File "/usr/src/supervisor/supervisor/backups/backup.py", line 399, in validate_backup
    await self.sys_run_in_executor(_validate_file)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 59, in run
    result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
  File "/usr/src/supervisor/supervisor/backups/backup.py", line 395, in _validate_file
    f"Invalid password for backup {backup.slug}", _LOGGER.error
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'TarFile' object has no attribute 'slug'e[0m

The backup is normal if restored by the old one that created it.
I also looked at the storeges of the old and the new ones:
The old I set 96GB, the new I set 97GB (On proxmox). The new one has plenty of free space