Updating HA running in docker container managed by Portainer

[heavy bane]

I'm running Home Assistant (HA) on my Pi4 in a docker container and I'm using Portainer (2.33.3 LTS CM edition) to manage my containers. In Portainer, I am using the homeassistant/home-assistant:latest image. I currently have HA 2025.10.4 installed and I want to update to either 2025.11 or 2025.12. (According to HA's release schedule, I should be able to get the 2025.12 version.)

To do the update, I go into Portainer's container management panel, select my HA container, stop it, and then chose to Recreate it with the re-pull image option turned on. In the past, this would trigger a download of the new image, which would take a little while, and after completing, I would restart the container and check that I have the latest version.

However, this time, Portainer returns too quickly (meaning it didn't download a new image) and when I restart HA, I find that I still have the 2025.10.4 version.
ChatGPT tells me that the :latest tag may be unreliable citing an example from 2025.8.

I prefer using the :latest tag since the updated image overwrites the existing image. Using tags denoting specific versions means I need to ensure I always have enough buffer space to accomodate the new image while updating.

What do I need to do in order to get the latest version?

[rustic smelt]

Use the stable tag. Can you show your compose/stack file from portainer?

[flat nacelle]

can you confirm you are using 64-bit OS? there's a few people that didn't realise they were running 32-bit which is now deprecated.
check by running this in terminal
dpkg-architecture --query DEB_HOST_ARCH

[heavy bane]

dpkg-architecture --query DEB_HOST_ARCH returns armhf, meaning 32 bits.
Looks like I need to re-install everything on my Pi.
(I'll do that later when I have time.)

[flat nacelle]

yup that will be the issue, using the backup system within home assistant should at least make that transition smooth. just remember to keep the backup key stored somewhere safe with the backup file.

[heavy bane]

I'm going to mark this resolved since upgrading the OS is the correct solution.

[flat nacelle]

awesome, good luck 🙂

[heavy bane]

Whilst tinkering around, I deleted the container because all my configuration data is outside the container (mapped to the container's config folder).
Since I don't have the time right now to upgrade my Pi, I decided to re-create a new HA container, thinking it would return to normal since I still have all the configuration data in my home user's folder structure. So I mapped config to point to the same folder.
However, when I entered HA, I was asked to create a user, and everything I had setup is missing in HA.

Is there a way of getting this back?