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Last active December 6, 2025 19:07
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Daily backup Home Assistant configuration into a git repository
Raw
.gitignore
# You can whitelist files/folders with !, those will not be ignored.
# Everything that starts with a / are for root elements
# ignore
/custom_components/
/zigbee2mqtt/log
/zigbee2mqtt/state.json
/home-assistant_v2.* # Exclude Home Assistant history-related database. Make sure to enable git LFS if you don't exclude that, since those files can go easily over 100MB
/home-assistant.log*
/.ssh/
.storage
# keep
!.gitignore
!.HA_VERSION
Raw
README.md

Daily backup Home Assistant with git

As always, please CONSTANTLY read and UNDERSTAND what you copy and run on the Internet. Stay safe!

  • mkdir a .ssh dir to the root of the config folder (should be /root/homeassistant)
  • ssh-keygen to that directory. I've used ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]". I will not cover the usage of a passphrase here.
  • Copy /root/homeassistant/.ssh/id_rsa.pub content to your Settings ➜ Deploy keys page of your Github repo
  • Because the shell command won't (obviously) have access to all of the HA instance, cd to your ha configuration directory and run that command to target the newly generated id_rsa file:
git config core.sshCommand "ssh -i /config/.ssh/id_rsa -o 'StrictHostKeyChecking=no' -F /dev/null"
  • Copy backup.sh to the HA configuration folder
  • Create a .gitignore file into the HA configuration folder and add the needed exceptions (I've provided mine)
  • Copy the automation content (automation.yaml), create a new automation and paste the content. You can also go to the automations.yaml and write it here if you're more comfortable. I've set the automation to automatically run at 2:00 am everday. Feel free to change it as you like. Also I like to be notified on the app, using the native notify service.
Raw
automation.yaml
# I've included the notify service to let you know when the backup is successful or not.
# In the long term I felt like having the successful notification wasn't needed so I removed it.
# Feel free to tweak that, and why not share what you did :)
alias: Daily Backup
description: "Backup Home Assistant configuration folder"
trigger:
- platform: time
at: "02:00:00"
condition: []
action:
- service: shell_command.backup
data: {}
response_variable: backup_response
- if:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ backup_response['returncode'] == 0 }}"
then:
- service: notify.notify
data:
title: ✅ Backup successful
message: "{{ backup_response['stdout'] }}"
else:
- service: notify.notify
data:
title: ❌ Backup failed
message: "{{ backup_response['stderr'] }}"
mode: single
Raw
backup.sh
#!/bin/sh
# To run before
# git config core.sshCommand "ssh -i /config/.ssh/id_rsa -o 'StrictHostKeyChecking=no' -F /dev/null"
HA_VERSION=`cat .HA_VERSION`
COMMIT_CURRENT_DATE=$(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')
COMMIT_MESSAGE="[$HA_VERSION]: $COMMIT_CURRENT_DATE"
echo "$COMMIT_MESSAGE"
git add .
git commit -m "$COMMIT_MESSAGE"
git push
Raw
configuration.yaml
# add the following into your configuration.yaml file
# …
shell_command:
backup: bash /config/backup.sh
# …
@vasilvestre
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vasilvestre commented Jun 21, 2024

Service shell_command.backup not found

backup.sh is copied to /root/coonfig which redirect to /homeassistant. I've missed something ?

@AkdM
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AkdM commented Jun 21, 2024

@vasilvestre You didn't, I did miss something!

You need to add the shell_command integration into your configuration.yaml, like such:

shell_command:
  backup: bash /config/backup.sh

I've updated the gist, thanks!

@vasilvestre
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vasilvestre commented Jun 21, 2024 •
edited
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@vasilvestre You didn't, I did miss something!

You need to add the shell_command integration into your configuration.yaml, like such:

shell_command:
  backup: bash /config/backup.sh

I've updated the gist, thanks!

Alright ! I found the solution myself but got an issue, the shell_command.backup service was not found despite the reload of my whole configuration. I had to restart home assistant.

I will wait to see if the automation runs great !

Public or private repository ?

I wonder if any secrets could get exposed or if I'm safe making the repo public ?

Other configuration outside /config

What about the directory at /root/addon_configs, /root/addons ?
My exemple is sponsorblockcast at /root/addon_configs/db21ed8f_sponsorblockcast/config.yaml

Home assistant v2 db being big

The file home-assistant_v2.db is at 46MB. Should I enable LFS right now ? Should I ignore the .db file ?

Thank you for your gist, really easy to configure everything.
Maybe you also forgot to use git init and git add remote to your steps :)

@AkdM
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AkdM commented Jun 21, 2024 •
edited
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@vasilvestre I recommend you to commit the backups into a private repository, as even if you ignore things, some updates or new integrations may lead to exposing secrets, and you obviously don't want that. I often change my configuration, try new integrations and stuff, and I don't want to worry about that. It will be a peace of mind if you put everything into a private repository.

About the configurations that is outside the /config folder I'm not really sure how to handle that, since I don't have anything interesting located outside that folder. I may have other ideas to make the backup easier to configure and to save (everything, this time), which would involve Github release instead of committing, with the same idea of hass-auto-backup. In the meantime, feel free to improve my researches :)

I've ignored the .db file since it's only historical data, mine is 404MB currently because of the recent devices I've added I guess, thus resulting into a failing commit because I didn't enabled LFS.
Actually here's my current .gitignore file:

/custom_components/
/zigbee2mqtt/log
/zigbee2mqtt/state.json
/home-assistant_v2.*
/home-assistant.log*
.ssh/
.storage

@vasilvestre
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vasilvestre commented Jun 21, 2024

For some reason /home-assistant_v2.* isn't matching my files. I had to change content to this :

# ignore
/custom_components/
/zigbee2mqtt/log
/zigbee2mqtt/state.json
/home-assistant_v2.db
/home-assistant_v2.db-shm
/home-assistant_v2.db-wal
/home-assistant.log*
/.ssh/
.storage

@vasilvestre
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vasilvestre commented Jul 7, 2024

I have this issue with the automation only, "Identify file /config/.ssh/id_rsa not accessible : no such file or directory."
Is this due to the permissions ?
image

@lrosselld
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lrosselld commented Nov 9, 2024

I am trying to add the .storage/lovelace file to save my Dashboard config. However, any way that I add the .storage folder to .gitignore it will not add to github.

Any advice?

@spcheema
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spcheema commented Nov 30, 2024

@lrosselld use .storage/* to ignore all files inside .storage and then whitelist .storage/lovelace. Here is updated list:

# ignore
/custom_components/
/zigbee2mqtt/log
/zigbee2mqtt/state.json
/home-assistant_v2.db
/home-assistant_v2.db-shm
/home-assistant_v2.db-wal
/home-assistant.log*
/.ssh/
.storage/*

!.storage/lovelace

@lrosselld
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lrosselld commented Jan 11, 2025 •
edited
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@spcheema unfortunately this did not resolve my problem. After adding the lines you suggested, it updated the .gitignore file backup but lovelace is still not uploading.

Here is my current .gitignore and my last commit/change.

image

image

@wjcarpenter
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wjcarpenter commented Jun 10, 2025

@AkdM Thanks so much for doing this write-up. It saved me a lot of poking around to figure out the pieces myself.

@bcjmk
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bcjmk commented Oct 11, 2025

I had a number of challenges getting this to work under HAOS. Apparently either ROOT or the ssh_config is a lot more restrictive. Anyway, had to make the following updates:

  1. Added id_rsa_git and known_hosts_git to /config/.ssh
  2. updated the GIT SSH command line to only use these 2 files

BTW - ssh -T [email protected] will work from the CLI, but not always in a script

# Add the GIT public keys to the known_hosts file from your directory
ssh-keyscan github.com >> /config/.ssh/known_hosts_git

# Test the config
ssh -i /config/.ssh/id_rsa_git -o UserKnownHostsFile=/config/.ssh/known_hosts_git -T [email protected]

# Update the GIT SSH command
# Use "-F /dev/null" to eliminate any global configuration settings that will screw things up
git config core.sshCommand "ssh -i /config/.ssh/id_rsa_git -o UserKnownHostsFile=/config/.ssh/known_hosts_git -F /dev/null"

@bcjmk
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bcjmk commented Oct 11, 2025

Also, had to tweak the .gitignore to include Lovelace. here is my current incarnation:

# WARNING: Make your GitHub repo Private if you are using this as it is
# Example .gitignore file for your config dir.

# An * ensures that everything will be ignored.
*

# You can whitelist files/folders with !, these will not be ignored.
!*.yaml
!.gitignore
!*.md
!*.sh
!*.js*
!*.py

# Comment these 2 lines if you don't want to include your SSH keys
!.ssh/
!id_rsa*

# Capture various custom script/flow directories
!node-red/
!python_scripts/
!shell_scripts/

# Capture lovelace dashboards
# Have to enable the folder first, then the individual files
# Lovelace files are NOT .yaml, so include anything that matches
!.storage/
!.storage/lovelace*

# Uncomment this if you don' want to include secrets.yaml 
# secrets.yaml

@mawmawmawm
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mawmawmawm commented Oct 31, 2025

I changed the commit message a bit so it's more informative and give a list of entities and things going on.

backup.sh:

#!/bin/bash
set -e

# --------------------------
# Configuration
# --------------------------
HA_VERSION=$(cat .HA_VERSION)
COMMIT_DATE=$(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')
REGISTRY="/config/.storage/core.entity_registry"

# --------------------------
# Entity counts by domain
# --------------------------
TOTAL_ENTITIES=$(jq '.data.entities | length' "$REGISTRY")
LIGHTS=$(jq '[.data.entities[] | select(.entity_id | startswith("light."))] | length' "$REGISTRY")
SWITCHES=$(jq '[.data.entities[] | select(.entity_id | startswith("switch."))] | length' "$REGISTRY")
SENSORS=$(jq '[.data.entities[] | select(.entity_id | startswith("sensor."))] | length' "$REGISTRY")
AUTOMATIONS=$(jq '[.data.entities[] | select(.entity_id | startswith("automation."))] | length' "$REGISTRY")
SCRIPTS=$(jq '[.data.entities[] | select(.entity_id | startswith("script."))] | length' "$REGISTRY")
SCENES=$(jq '[.data.entities[] | select(.entity_id | startswith("scene."))] | length' "$REGISTRY")

# --------------------------
# Compose commit message
# --------------------------
COMMIT_MESSAGE="[$HA_VERSION] 📅 $COMMIT_DATE

📦 Entities: $TOTAL_ENTITIES
💡 Lights: $LIGHTS
🔀 Switches: $SWITCHES
🌡️ Sensors: $SENSORS
⚙️ Automations: $AUTOMATIONS
📜 Scripts: $SCRIPTS
🎭 Scenes: $SCENES"

# --------------------------
# Commit and push
# --------------------------
echo -e "$COMMIT_MESSAGE"

git add .
git commit -m "$(echo -e "$COMMIT_MESSAGE")"
git push

@bcjmk thanks for your ignore file, however /blueprints is missing and should be added:

# Capture various custom script/flow directories
!blueprints/
!blueprints/*
!blueprints/*/*

@AkdM
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AkdM commented Oct 31, 2025

Nice improvement @mawmawmawm, thanks!

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