IMPORTANT!!! Data loss (all your camera recordings) on 0.17 BE CAREFUL!!!!

[agzennet]

Today I've updated from 0.16 to 0.17.
My "recording:" section needed fix, so when I restarted frigate docker container, it went to safe mode, pointing me to correct it, which I did. After that, all my 25-days recordings for all my cameras were deleted.

Per issue #22491, if your frigate goes to safe mode, it sets the recording to 0 days, so while you solve your problem, frigate is wiping all your recordings!

While the bug is fixed, it is not yet in the 0.17 version, so everyone updating in a similar case than me will lose their recordings.

I think the frigate team needs to address this ASAP, removing 0.17 from download or warning it to the users (or any other solution).

(This is not to blame the frigate team, they are doing a great job and the responsibility is mine for not having backups. It is just to warn for ASAP action as I understand others could also lose their recordings easily.)

[hawkeye217]

Yes, this was just reported the other day (after months of development, betas, and release candidates). We plan to release 0.17.1 with a fix (and others) very soon.

In the meantime, we suggest using the UI's built-in editor to edit your config, as we have always suggested. Validation happens there directly and won't allow you to restart before any errors are fixed. This will prevent Frigate from ever entering safe mode.

[agzennet]

Good to have the patch soon. Thank you.

I only used the built-in editor.
So:

• Frigate fine working on 16.3. Recordings fine. My config used the non 0.17 recordings definition.
• I update the compose.yaml to use 17 release and rebuild.
• When I open the frigate url, the safe editor appears, indicating my config is not valid.
  (as per ticket 22491, frigate sets the days=0 on its own, and wipes my recordings)
• I solve it in the editor and press save and restart, keeping my policy of 10 days full retain.
• Frigate works but all my recordings are gone.

[hawkeye217]

Were you running a beta or dev version at any point before you upgraded to 0.17?

[agzennet]

No. I was on 0.16.3-tensorrt

[hawkeye217]

Interesting. It's not clear why the config migrator didn't run, perhaps something with your Docker setup. Nonetheless, this issue has already been improved and released with Frigate 0.17.1, so I'll close out this discussion. Feel free to let us know if there's anything else we can help with!

[grzywek]

@hawkeye217 Same happened to me and I was not aware I lost those recordings till I actually needed them. I had to rerun Frigate with " sync_recordings: true" which gave me the following results: "Deleting 187095 recording DB entries with missing files".

I’m wondering whether allowing such a desync by default is a flawed assumption. A user could be misled for months by incorrect information in the GUI. Recordings may (theoretically) disappear for various reasons. Perhaps Frigate should perform periodic file validation to keep the information reliable? Would that really be so resource-consuming?

Please consider this. I believe this is an important issue.

[NickM-27]

Perhaps Frigate should perform periodic file validation to keep the information reliable? Would that really be so resource-consuming?

Yes, it would. Frigate used to do this and it was very problematic. Not only for cpu usage but also keeping drives spun up.

This is a nasty bug for sure, but not something that happens often and is something that has already been fixed.