Well, both good news and bad news. Yes, restoring the corrupted backup with 2.2.9.133 did allow the hub to successfully boot and run. However, the restored backup was still somewhat corrupted.
All of the 5.1 rules that I had created (only about a half dozen, so no big deal) had their names in the app list but were empty. The logs were inaccessible (500 error).
I just tossed it and went back to the earlier, good, database. My concern is that people might get a false sense of security if a corrupt repaired database then booted.
All of this talk (regardless of what got fixed or not) has me balking at a recent suggestion that I do a Soft Reset for troubleshooting purposes. The troubleshooting in question (suspicion of a corrupted database, in connection with an RM ► Repeat Actions issue I reported over the weekend) seems suddenly trivial compared with the prospect of me fudging my hub in the process, lol.
Sitting on hands for now. Especially because I don't know what "You will lose all your settings" really means under the circumstances – even when things go 100% right.
Soft reset is, in my opinion, approximately the same risk as an automated reboot.
It's a process every Hub owner should go through so that this exact question never comes up as a fear. It's well documented and involves:
making a backup (Settings:Backup:Download) saved to your PC.
using the Diagnostic menu, perform a soft reset.
when the hub reboots, you'll be at a "Green Screen" and at the very bottom, in small type, is Restore from backup.
choose that option and select the backup you just saved.
when the hub reboots for the 2nd time, you'll be right back where you were, but without any DB corruption.
I've done this process hundreds of times by now and never had a failure. That's not to say no one, ever, will never have a failure... it's just as bland a process as we have available. I use this technique on my development hub(s) to switch between configs. To test my code, maybe I want to have a "new hub" that has never seen the code.. I have a backup saved with that config and I just soft reset to it. When I'm done with that test, I soft reset to the next test config I need. I might do it 6-8 times a day.
Thanks, based on this, I am less fearful. I had wondered what other "Settings" I might be faced with having to update. Meanwhile, got my backup(s) safely on local storage ready to restore after the Soft Reset. Appreciate the moral support!
It means that, if you don’t restore a previously-saved database backup, you have an “out-of-the-box” experience on your hub with the exception of the Z-Wave and Zigbee radios, which are not touched by the soft reset process.
Not quite done it 100's of times but have done quite a few. Never had an issue either. Always been a clean process.
What I do do though, Is a reboot of the hub when it restores with the backed up DB on it. Just me I suppose. No real need too but it makes me feel better.
Done! The Soft Reset process went without a hitch -- can you blame a former Vera user for being skittish?? LOL every other firmware update we were asked to install resulted in a bricked unit.
Thanks again for the hand-holding. When I was 12, and going on a new roller coaster (which had upside-down barrel rolls!) for the first time, I convinced my best friend to talk me through it. He did. I felt less scared.
Who knew I'd still be a scaredy-cat half a century later, ha ha.
Now that you've done it and know what the steps are, realize that the process takes you back to the moment of the backup. If you're not taking backups regularly or are altering the Hub configuration often, then the most recent backup might be disappointingly different from today's config. You will lose what's missing.. pretty obvious really.
Here's an example situation.. mostly I'm inventing worst case. Your hub is puttering along nicely, you did a backup, then an upgrade of the platform and a week later, a power outage occurs. Usually not an issue but lucky you, the DB got corrupted. Now the hub won't boot. You can get to the Diagnostic menu, but the best backup you have is before the platform update and a Soft Reset effectively builds a (for this imaginary, worst case scenario) mismatch between the platform version and the backup version.
I hope that opened a door for you to imagine your own set of situations you wouldn't want to have happen... most of which are fixed by having a once-a-day backup plan. The hub itself will make a backup with each reboot and thus for non-worst case scenarios, that internal backup is good enough. In other words, you upgrade the platform and that reboot causes a new backup to be saved internally. But bottom line, the Soft Reset is a big part of many recovery plans you'll hear around this Community.
