How to keep everything automatically up to date?

Configuration
41

I can’t speak for others on here but I would never do auto updates because I enjoy the ability to continue tinkering at all. If everything broke regularly due auto updates with breaking changes I would’ve exhausted my supply of PAF a long time ago and my system would’ve mysteriously found itself in the garbage.

I do auto update other things that only affect me even if they sometimes break. But not something like ha which I want others in my house to adopt and enjoy.

Kind of weird logic here? Seems like the best way to achieve this is to never update. Not that I’m encouraging that but auto updates is a surefire way to ensure you have to think about your home automations regularly.

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42

Not updating a static system that works is by far the best solution….:thinking:
But for tinkerer’s like myself that is not really an option :yum:

But i did notice that there are nowadays a lot less breaking changes then 2 years ago, however there was one now with node-red :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

43

No. I’m running HA on the Home Assistant Operating System. It’s a specialized operating system that runs HA and nothing else.

For example, if you go to the Raspberry Pi installation instructions here https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/raspberrypi/- you can see how to download and install the OS.

44

Then you are in fact running HA in a Docker environment.

Every version of HA that includes a Supervisor runs in Docker. Unless you know how to look for it you won’t see it but it’s definitely there.

In fact, the Supervisor itself, every add-on you install and all of the other various assorted HA support functions (hass audio, cli, dns, etc) are all running in their own associated docker containers.

so yes, you have the ability to run Watchtower (as an add-on I think) and that will keep you up to date automatically.

45

Which is likely to be an even more terrible idea than normal and should result in a broken install in record time :partying_face:

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46

Yup.

I never said I recommended it. I just said it was possible for those die-hard ‘I want to auto update everything’ folks. :laughing:

I personally wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.

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47

that sounds like home assistant regularly breaks with upgrades o.o
Thats not a good system :frowning:

48

Not if you bother to read the release notes…

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49

to be honest i don’t.
it is not 1999 anymore … i expect my it systems to auto update and be on the newest version without the need of spending 15 minutes to log in to everything each day just to click the upgrade button -…-

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50

And you figure that works with 1990 supported integrations (and a lot more if you include HACS).
There is no developer who has al those devices to test…

I myself wrote one integration on HACS, and as long as I have the device, I will support it…
But if it breaks down (or stop using it for whatever reason)…it’ll be the end of it, unless someone else pick it up…
I’m afraid that is the reality of an open source project that supports so many devices…

51

yeah i try to kiss - and therefor i am update stable.
and even if in 10 years there would be a break i can disaster recover in minutes by going back to the last snapshot of the vm.

i get your point and it would be ok to have the auto update off by default. But at least offer this option for advanced users.

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52

But advanced users won’t be the ones to typically use any auto-update feature since they know what the pitfalls are to such a system for at least HA.

the ones more likely to use it are the ones most likely to not know how to recover from a broken system.

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53

than make it an option you can only enable via ssh or what ever…
but not building this option in and force ppl who whish to be updated to waste time every day to manually upgrade if there is one is not nice

And the ppl you describe fall in the pits no matter what.

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54

no one is being forced to update.

and if you do want to update then I’m pretty sure that the “Watchtower” option will work for every install type except the Core only install.

so if you want to auto update then install Watchtower.

that method also falls into your “that you can only enable via ssh or what ever…” request.

I think you are way overstating how much effort it takes to update.

usually the updates take a few minutes and I only update once a month.

there is absolutely no need to update “every day” even if there is one available.

that assumes of course that there are no breaking changes (intentional or not). If that’s case then it takes a bit longer to mitigate those.

But there again, those are the times I wouldn’t want to auto update anyway so the comparison fails immediately at that point.

Not if they read the release notes and take the breaking changes into account first.

of course there will be (and are) those that don’t do that before updating anyway. Nothing anyone can do can fix that.

An auto-update schema would just give those in the middle the false sense of security that updates are no big deal. until they are…

And again, even well tested software like Windows no longer forces you to auto-update and likely for the same reasons as stated in this thread - people were tired of waking up to a dead computer due to a failed update.

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55

thank you for your input

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56

That’s not true. Maybe it was a couple of years ago, but now days I feel totally confortable about updating HA.
To be honest, since a couple of months ago I’ve even automated my updating process and it’s working like a charm. This is what I use:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-keep-everything-automatically-up-to-date/288938/40?u=edwardtfn

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57

Hi,

I’ve been using HA for several months now (since maybe January, or Feb of this year), eventually looking to use it to replace my other, more popular assistant. I have several integrations for my lights, TVs, doorbell, and more. I run this in a VM (VirtualBox) on Kubuntu 20.04, without the cloud integration.

I’ve not read release notes on a single update that I’ve done, and never once have I had an update that broke anything, and I update as soon as I see there is an update available to anything that doesn’t automatically update, but I don’t want to be bothered spending 10-20 mins reading through release notes every other week, before performing an update, when I have other stuff to do.

More than once in this thread I saw the words “intentionally breaking” and that doesn’t exactly sit right with me. It makes no sense to intentionally break a feature/integration, etc on an update, unless you’re updating that to fix what you break at the same time. (I could’ve misunderstood this)

I’m a decent IT guy for Windows, and a bit for Linux, but for this system, I’m just an average user who doesn’t know the advanced stuff, and would have to research to do anything other than use it, and run the very obvious manual updates.

I can get why some people would hate the idea of automatic updates, but even Linux has options to automatically apply updates, should the user want this. (Mentioned because I saw it mentioned somewhere here that Linux doesn’t do this, and I help manage a Linux server that is setup to do exactly that.)

I propose a compromise… Provide an optional integration that allows for automatic updates, should the user want them. If you put out an update that is an intentional break to an integration/feature they’re using, have the automatic update integration flag the update, and notify the user with an in-your-face warning that requires a manual update for safety (for those who do not read release notes). This way, non-breaking updates can be applied automatically, and breaking updates would still require a manual trigger, along with an obvious warning.

I get why devs would be inclined to refuse this idea, but being brutally honest, this is what the average consumer wants, when it comes to home automation/assistant software like this, and I think this might be a decent compromise for both sides of this.

58

You must be a very slow reader… 1-2 minute(s) per row???

last ‘breaking’ changes:
Advantage Air
Calendar
HERE Travel Time
HomeKit Controller
LIFX
Logger
Material Design Icons
Sonos
SwitchBot
Z-Wave

59

Nah. That was an estimation, based on the average length of release/patch notes for apps that I’ve occasionally taken the time to read them for. As I mentioned before, I’ve never read release notes for HA.

Your list also kinda goes along with what I was saying. My idea would have this auto-update integration look at other integrations in-use, and warn about any breaking changes in those particular packages by comparing to this list… In this case, it wouldn’t need to warn me, because I don’t have these integrations, meaning nothing would break for me.

Not everyone uses every integration, and so while some may find something breaking every few updates, others (like me) may not see anything break through several months worth of updates. These are the people this would really be useful for.

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60

?? My Home Assistant doesn’t stop working waiting for an update, it just sends me a notification that an update is available. If you don’t change anything, you don’t ever have to upgrade.

I agree completely. In fact, I would not miss auto update if it were depreciated tomorrow. I did have auto-update selected and I did not know of a breaking change until an integration stopped working. Of course at the most inconvenient time possible. Now when I see the notification “updates available” I always read “Breaking Changes” so if something I use is going to break, I’ll know in advance of the upgrade.