HA OS 8.1 not starting with Private IP Address, uses public address?

I’m a real noob on HA. Came over when Insteon shut down. I started with HA OS 7.6 on RPi 3, worked fine for several weeks. Last week I upgraded to HA OS 8.1 which also worked fine and my apps on IOS and Win10 also found the RPi and I see it in my router’s wired devices table with a private IP 192.168.x.x
Last night, there was a major power outage and the whole neighborhood went down (drunk took out a power pole), a disorderly shutdown. Power back 4 hours later. All network connected devices have come back on line except for the HA OS RPi. Since it doesn’t have a private IP, it doesn’t appear on my router’s list of wired devices. Therefor neither IOS or Win10 apps can find the HA OS to make a connection. Using the HA OS CLI, I show the IP address is a version of the public IP used by my cable modem.
I swapped the HA OS sd card with my RPi OS sd card and it boots properly with a private IP address.
I did make a backup of the HA OS 8.1 version when it was working but am not sure how to do a restore.
Where do I start?

I’d start by giving the MAC address of the RPi a reservation in the router. Beyond that I can only guess why a device on the LAN side of the router would get a WAN address. Maybe something about the timing of when HA OS started, vs when the router started and began handing out DHCP addresses?

Hi @kblackw, @CaptTom,

I think Tom is pointing you to the right direction. If you did not configure via the HA gui or HA OS, or configuration a static IP… then it should ask your router/dhcp server for an ip in your private subnet.
this so called lease should be visible within your router/server.
to give you a little more help tell us more about your network setup?

In terms of backup what backup do you have and how did you make the backup? thank you

Thanks for the suggestions. I shutdown my whole network and began and orderly restart - Cable modem, network router for ethernet, mesh router for wi-fi but that didn’t change the HAOS boot problem. Since I can boot the RPi with my RPiOS sd and get a LAN address, I decided the power fail must have corrupted the HAOS sd. So I formatted the sd, flashed with HA 8.2 and started all over again. It’s a PITA to reenter everything but at least I know how to do that.
The new HAOS boots correctly and gets a local LAN address.
So for backups, I did one from the HA CLI on the RPi and one from the WIN10 HA app. I have no idea where they’re stored, but I did write down the backup file names this time. I don’t see a DIR command in the HA CLI, so the HAOS is like a black box to me.
Maybe I’ll find some documents that explain more details. When I first came into the HA sphere I was in a rush to get it running so I could regain control of my insteon stuff. Now the pressure if OFF so I’ll spend some time poking around.
Again thanks for your suggestions. Eventually I’ll figure my way around this.

The backups are stored on the same device as the HA OS. In your case, the SD card. There has been a lot of angst about this. There are several add-ons which will copy it to off-line storage automatically. Of course, it’s still created on the SD card, first. You already know about SD card corruption, so you can see why this is a bad idea. Feel free to up-vote my Feature Request if you agree, but meanwhile, get comfortable with the backup and restore process so you can do what works best for you.

The DIR command is a DOS/Windows thing. You’re looking for the LS command. By far the easiest thing to do, if you have a Windows laptop or desktop, is to install the SAMBA add-on and access the HA files that way.

Thanks for commentary Capt Tom, very helpful. I did upvote your feature request, hope it gets some traction. I’ll checkout SAMBA add-on. I there something similar for the RPi? I’m thinking if I could have found the backup on the RPi, I might have been able to reload from that and saved some trouble.
I guess I sound kind of ignorant. It’s not like I have no knowledge - I have a BS/MS in EE, finished my 50 year career at one of the National Labs, my group was responsible for the care and feeding of both super computer centers and the worldwide gigabit network supporting the physics research community. That said, relearning this stuff at 83 is still a challenge. Not an excuse, just my reality and now digging into a little nitty gritty.
Thanks again. As I said before, I’ll keep digging into the documentation and hopefully get just a little bit smarter.

Kevin, I feel your pain. I, too had a long career in IT, but very little of that carries over into the very specific components HA uses. I had exposure to unix-based systems and Python, but was never a heads-down coder in anything HA uses, except maybe a little SQL. It feels a bit odd to be scoffed at because I don’t know all the abbreviations, conventions and secret handshakes this community uses, but I’m making progress. One tip: There is a lot of documentation available, but (1) it’s written largely by coders and makes a lot of assumptions about the reader’s experience level, and (2) it’s not always updated when things change. Don’t expect a corporate technical or user manual and you should be able to figure most things out. And if not, there are lots of helpful folks here.

Don’t give up. HA is a great tool and will provide hours of entertainment and frustration tinkering with it. Sometimes it’ll even work as intended. But I look around and there’s really no place I’d rather be in the home automation space.

Capt Tom, that’s a very encouraging bit of advice. I’m glad I’m not the only dinosaur out here. I did get SAMBA running and it’ll be helpful when the next ‘head crash’ occurs. I really appreciate your advice. Thanks.