Borked my SD-migration royally... halp plase?

What I was trying to do:

  • migrate my install to a larger SD card.

Steps I took:

  • copied image to new SD card
  • updated my current install to the latest version (0.98.02?)
  • took a snapshot
  • copied snapshots to laptop via Samba
  • made a copy\paste backup via Samba to a folder on my laptop
  • shutdown current install, swapped SD cards, inserted USB with WiFi info
  • booted new install, installed samba addon…
    (this is where my first stumble was… didn’t take note of my Samba config)
  • booted old install
    (forgot to remove USB with WiFi info)
    (it appeared that the old install was stuck in a boot loop… I’m not great at reading the console messages but it seemed to be network related… maybe?)
  • made a fresh ‘new’ install on a 3rd SD card… booted it, installed samba addon, changed hostname to ‘hassio2’, was able to connect via samba, copied snapshots over…
    (details get a little blurry here as I was scrambling to get enough pieces in place to be able to connect to the UI…shuffling between local http, local https, remote https… )

Where it stands:

I can load the UI in my browser, it appears most of my (basic) customizations are in place (themes, things specifically addressed in /config/configuration.yaml, automations…

However… My UI is… pages are gone, everything in back on the main, default page…
If I go… sandwich menu>configuration>general… I can’t change my time zone
also: my previous PlayStation4 integration isn’t showing… but when I try to add it back it, the list of integrations flickers away but comes right back.

So… how might I go about starting to remedy this whole sideways journey that I’ve taken myself down?

Did you restore the snapshot (hassio side panel>snapshots and makes sure you tap the refresh button top right of snapshots) and restore??? Can take 20+ mins to restore so be patient.

Aye. Both new installs it was restoring the snapshot that actually integrated my zWave and ZigBee devices…

To update: Did another ‘from scratch’ SD card… varied some approaches, got slightly better results. I need to go to bed for work tomorrow but I seem to have mitigated most, if not all, of the obvious issues.

Having had a chance to think about things a bit… I think the important lessons are that snapshots don’t appear to be the ‘all-inclusive’ backup that I may have thought them to be and my install didn’t (doesn’t?) have a ui-lovelace.yaml file… in the future I think I’m going to have to be far more observant of what I’m backing up as well as what I need to be backing up.

I have restored multiple times from snapshots on multiple systems and they do work as a 100% all inclusive backup/restore. You do have to be patient though as it does take a while to restore a snapshot…

I hesitate to express my doubt on that at this point. My plan is to go pick up a couple Pi4’s this weekend so I can upgrade some other deployments and get a Pi3 back in my inventory for testing\development purposes.

That said- for me the term ‘Snapshot’ means a saved image of how things are at that particular point in time. As it stands-

  • my UI customizations are gone, I’m back to one page with all my sensors and such on it… I’m guessing because my install was using some other method of storing those things and that was something that wasn’t included in the ‘snapshot’.
  • the game history for the PS4 integration is gone.
  • the directory that my theme yamls didn’t get restored from the snapshot.

I’m pretty sure I gave the restore ample time to finish and restore everything it was going to restore. …at least… the log said the restore had finished…

Interesting, as I have restored many snapshots successfully and my configs are broken out to several yaml files. Those files, secrets file, all plugin versions and settings, UI customizations, zwave config, database, logs, etc… everything gets restored. It can take a while, and some plugins may require a second reboot to be fully functional like before. Just one time I had a database get corrupted (easy fix just delete it and reboot). I think that was because a power problem though.

You can try to find out exactly what mis-config there is that results in this behavior. Having functioning snapshots is a big deal, in fact I recommend always verifying any backup/restore method with safe testing… before actually needing to use it. In your case that would require having another sd card to verify with, but yeah…

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To address the bulk of what you said- that’s why I’m hoping to be able to make it out to pick up at least one Pi4 this weekend. I’ll be able to swap that for the Pi3B+ that OSMC is running on which will leave me with a spare Pi. Last weekend I had the tablet I use for most of my HA control laying on my bed… and stepped on it… it’s replacement/upgrade is expected in tomorrows mail… I need to go to MicroCenter for a couple mSD cards since my supply is down to a couple 8’s, 2 16’s and a dead 32…

So yeah… once I have dev hardware to test with I’ll dig in and see what I see but I’m starting to lean towards taking this as a good time to rebuild from scratch with what I have now as an intended destination.