Where is the discussion thread about only requiring 64 bit operating systems and the technical aspects regarding binding issues related to that? I looked here and on github – probably me but I couldn’t find it offhand. Thanks.
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See:
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Thanks I kept looking for it in discussions and when I searched I kept searching for 64 bit rather than 32 bit.
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Thanks! So it’s due to Java21.
Looks logical to get a recent Java engine.
I’ve recycled some armv7 board for Openhab, need to upgrade it ASAP.
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After reading through the thread;
I have used Rpi3b 1GB for some testing (main productions are Rpi4 and Rpi5). Along the way I ran a 64 bit O/S (back to 32 bit now - htop 0.5G +/-) and found that OH4.x did not fit. It was a very small installation (no rules, 6 things, 11 items). I’m not against the changes, all for valid reasons. What I’m wondering is if a forum announcement regarding Rpi3b’s (or 1GB RAM systems) might alert more casual users of the HW requirements. Just thinking about getting ahead of the situation. WDYT?
I haven’t read the recent docs, but don’t think there is a risk to over communicate
It was really prominent in the blogpost that starting with openHAB 5 Java21 and a 64bit OS is required.
For the technical folks this makes sense. Do all rpi3 (and earlier) owners know they are on a 32bit platform? (ie Does armv7 mean I have a 32bit system?) Do all users know that a very basic OH with Java21 and 64bit OS will exceed 1GB ram? (Do all users even know how much their OH uses?) Do all users read the docs? From my time on the forum, the answers are not always yes.
Something like
" … starting with openHAB 5 Java21 and a 64bit OS is required. This means that for all practical purposes hardware with on 1GB of RAM (i.e. Rpi3b’s) will not work with OH5"
might cover more bases, except those that don’t read the docs. Anyway just a suggestion. I could be too pessimistic.
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It might be useful to do a more recent survey of who is using what platform. There are probably not that many people using a rpi2 anymore because of the memory limitations.
You might have more people like myself that have a 8Gb rpi4 but since the 64 bit raspian was not GA until Feb 2022, running in 32 bit. I switched my kernel to 64bit once that was GA, unfortunately you still have the 32 bit o/s binaries because that’s what you started with. Technically it’s possible to mix 32bit and 64bit executables, but in practice I don’t see any “supported” way of doing that.
The issue with the larger memory rpis is that people don’t dedicated them just to openhab, so whereas a complete reinstallation is easy (you can just use dpkg and apt-get to reinstall what you had), “configuring” things like nginx, email servers, NAS stuff, etc… (whatever else grew up on that
raspberry pi) is the real pain. It really depends how many people used a monolithic server approach rather than just running openhab on a dedicated pi, docker, etc… Arguably it’s probably a small minority.
Looking around, openjdk 17 is not eol until 2027 and the oracle 17 jdk is on extended until 2029, so it might be possible to keep running that for a while with an older version of openhab. Bookworm is EOL in 2028, and currently Trixie only has the 64 bit jdk in the distro.
Of course you can stick with openHAB 4.3, which is the last version supporting Java17. But then you will miss out new features to come with openHAB 5.
My post will be a tad off topic but I wanted to share a bit my experience, because it might help others looking for alternatives to the raspberry pi modules for openHAB 5.
I have in the past bought several raspberry pi’s.
The 3, 4 and recently the 5. The prices have been increasingly steadily and I no longer view the raspberry pi as an accessible computing module.
When I bought the 4, I paid about 80 euros for a working solution (psu, sd card, case, and the cooler.)
When I bought the 5 this increased to over 120 euros because the old psu is no longer capable of pushing the pi 5 needs and I needed a better cooler too.
Nowadays however we can buy a micro pc with a celeron or an i3 for prices around 40 euros, and you can go up to 100 euros for mini PCs with i3s - fully assembled, with ssds and 4 or 8 gigs of ram which are fantastic for openHAB.
I have one (though tbh it’s being used to stream Steam games… no judging!) and it sips energy, it has a gigabit nic, 4 usb ports, standard efi bios and it’s great to stick in a closet or corner somewhere with a zigbee stick.
So if anyone is looking for a real upgrade to stick OpenHAB 5, maybe look for refurbished micro/mini PCs (remember the Intel NUCs?).
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Right I just don’t know what percentage of openhab users are in that boat - the boat being a 32bit o/s that has a bunch of other stuff running on it. If you did a survey of platforms and found that 80% of the user base was on 32bit o/s that might be a cause for concern.
If I were to bet, I think once more people have to get forced to do a full reinstall (not just because of openhab) then there might be a more supported way of adding the 64 bit o/s executables so that you can run the 64bit jvm on an o/s that had been originally installed as 32bit. You can technically do that right now by copying over the binaries and libraries that are needed, but it would be a mess.