HA 2025.11.1 / home-assistant.log file disappeared

Configuration
1

after an update to HA Core 2025.11.1. my home-assistant.log file disappeared
Is this a known issue or documented change ( I missed it in notes ) ?
any idea how to fix this ?
thx

drwxr-xr-x   11 root     root          4096 Nov  8 11:04 .
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          4096 Nov  7 23:19 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             9 Nov  8 11:04 .HA_VERSION
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Nov  8 12:09 .cloud
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            84 Nov  8 11:04 .ha_run.lock
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Nov  8 12:17 .storage
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         20376 Nov  2 20:39 automations.yaml
drwxr-xr-x    5 root     root          4096 Nov  6  2024 blueprints
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           852 Sep 22  2024 configuration.yaml
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Jan 29  2025 custom_components
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Jan 12  2024 deps
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         23458 Nov  7 23:31 home-assistant.log.1
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Nov  8 11:04 home-assistant.log.fault
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         14292 Nov  8 11:03 home-assistant.log.old
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root     252686336 Nov  8 12:15 home-assistant_v2.db
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         65536 Nov  8 12:18 home-assistant_v2.db-shm
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       4548512 Nov  8 12:18 home-assistant_v2.db-wal
drwxr-xr-x    6 root     root          4096 Aug 20 12:56 image
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Jan 21  2024 packages
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1556 Nov  7 23:44 recorder.yaml
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          2780 Feb  4  2024 scenes.yaml
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         11293 Oct 25 15:01 scripts.yaml
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           291 Jan 21  2024 secrets.yaml
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1682 Nov  2 21:11 templates.yaml
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Jun 15  2024 tts
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Oct 19  2024 www
2

It is in the 2025.11.0 release notes

There is a custom integration to replace it, search the forum

3
4

Thank you !

1 Like
5

This is absolutely the dumbest decision the team has ever made. We’re supposed to rely on HA running to get access to the logs? What do we do when it crashes? BRING BACK THE LOG FILE

6

In the release notes it is explained, that the logs had always been written twice till now.
This is fixed with 2025.11, so from now on the logs are only written once, not twice any longer.
If you still need the logs to be written twice (which takes more time), you can install the integration to do so, but the question is, why do you need the logs to be written twice?

7

you of course are fully aware that is not the actual ‘need’… and not what poster expresses his worries about. It is this:

btw, check here for many reasons, and still no solutions but half baked workaround

8

The problem isn’t duplication. The non-file-based log can’t be accessed unless Home Assistant is already running, which defeats the purpose of having logs at all. To answer your question directly, I don’t want logs written twice, I want them written to a file I can actually access. Your question was a strawman.

I stand by what I said. This was one of the most shortsighted decisions this team has made. I’m now running the add-on just to get logs written to disk, but since it’s not bootstrapped, it takes time to start and misses the critical early output.

Bring back the log file, or at least make it optional. Stop making big changes in isolation that affect users without providing alternatives. The recent backup system changes were the same story, major shifts made without user feedback, followed by partial walk-backs. In a configuration-over-convention system like Home Assistant, user options aren’t a luxury, they’re essential.

1 Like
9

It’s a pitty that changes with such a big influence to the workflow of many users are not announced earlier and discussed longer. I see no benefit to do such changes in that hasty way.

I hope, that development team will learn to communicate much better, not only every 2nd year in the WTH challenge.

I assume there are aprox. 10 other teams working already on 10 different workaround tools to bring the logfiles back. Log-Viewer is also broken because nobody told them about the (unplanned) change.

1 Like
10

I just want to note that you can always get the core logs via the ha core logs command. Either via SSH or via keyboard and monitor.

11

Thanks a lot for this helpful hint, I could see the logfile with color highlighting in the Toggel-Panel (Ctrl-J) of the Studio Code Server now.

This was my 2nd unix command I needed after activation of HACS.

One big disadvantage is still existing. The Log Viewer makes an auto refresh, the console doesn’t. It seems, that ha core logs -f can solve that. But I need to remember, that stopping that again needs Ctrl-C.

It would have been really good, if HA 2025.11 would not have killed Log-Viewer which was much more user friendly than this console command.

Do HA-Developers think, that all end users are Unix-Experts?

But maybe there are completely different reasons for this decision.

  • Sorry, we are all Unix-Experts, nobody of us could ever imagine how Non-Unix-Experts think.
  • Sorry, this was just an April-Joke, nobody of us realized that April is long over.
  • Sorry, this was just a test of the suffering resilience of our community, you won the first prize.