OK where do I learn this i find videos the easiest way too learn so Youtube videos? Should I be looking for videos on RPi or Linux or just openhab running on pi?
My PI has arrived now I got the latest pi 3 b+
I should have brought one of these ages ago I’m highly impressed for such small board I think I will be buying a few more for other uses
There are all sorts of references out there. Look for getting started with Linux in YouTube or Google and you will find plenty of resources. The RPi folks have several getting started on the RPi books free to download.
I haven’t been a beginner on Linux for 20 years so I can’t give you any personal experience as to what is going or not. And I learn best from books and text because I can then go back and readily look into how to do it again. I can’t do that well with videos.
I think I’m going too be able too do this I do feel comfortable using the ssh ect now I have tried it for the first time I can see me and Linux being freinds in the end
I have a slight problem with my setup moving habpanel I will link the post below as it’s sort of related too this post
If you are running raspbian then there is a built in backup capability called Amanda which pretty much does everything that this script does and more. The advantage of Amanda is it will do the backups on your live running system (i.e. you don’t need to stop and power off your RPi to make the backup and transfer the SD card to a Windows machine). The bad part is for some new Linux users, getting your external USB thumb drive so the RPi can see it is not always straight forward.
Since you are first starting out, I think this approach would be a great way to go until you get a bit more comfortable with Linux and the RPi. Then look for “how to mount thumb drive raspbian” or the like on Google and you should find all sorts of tutorials.
Thanks for your help Rich you are dedicated too this you always respond when others don’t, I really appreciate the time you take too help me and others with this stuff. I just hope I can learn enoght too help others soon
I’m not sure what I’m running tbh I installed openhabian but I understand that’s running on top of something is that raspbian?
Are you saying mksmarthouse version would require me too stop openhab?
I have seen references too the Amanda backup inside the console but as you say I’m a beginner so would be better following the guide I posted
Is the sd card and USB stick still readable by a Windows computer I saw mksmarthouse use win 32 disk image too read the card in the video
raspbian is the name of the Linux distro that is the default for RPis. openHABian is a series of scripts that configures raspbian to run OH and a bunch of related applications and services.
Watch the video again (starting around 8:05). To backup everything on the RPi, you need to shutdown the RPi, move the SD card to your Windows machine, then create a disk image of the SD card using WinDisk32. If all you care about is openHAB backups you can follow the tutorial up to this point and that will work.
Though I will say that the hard part of working with Amanda is mounting the thumb drive. So if you stop at the 6:16 point you will have your thumb drive mounted at /mnt/openHABBackup (or whatever). Now if you run openhabian-config and go through the Amanda setup, choose /mnt/openHABBackup as the destination and Amanda will backup your entire system, not just openHAB, to that thumb drive.
The process in the rest of the video is a good idea to do periodically as it is easier to restore your RPi in a disaster with a disk image then it would be to start from a blank openHABian install, go through the steps to mount the thumb drive, and then run an Amanda restore.
That will narrow things down, but honestly the sorts of things you would be looking up at this point will be generic Linux questions so it doesn’t really matter. But if it is an operating system thing you need to look for Linux or raspbian. If it is an OH related thing you need to search for openHAB. If it is a Mosquitto thing you need to search for Mosquitto.
As on Windows or any other system, each program you install has their own commands.
At the moment I think I’m better sticking too manually checking if the backup has happened. as I still have alot too learn already but i will add this on my todo list I’m also planning on swapping to Amanda at some point
Last night I was having problems with my setup I tried too boot without the backup USB drive in the system I got stuck in emergency mode and could only boot once I replaced the USB drive is this expected behaviour for Linux
I’m not after a long answer but what would happen if the USB drive failed how would I boot back into my system? Or would I be pretty screwed?
I don’t know. It depends on how the mount is configured in fstab. It sounds like it’s configure to fall back to single user mode if it can’t mount the file system. There is a way to make the mounting optional at boot so if it falls to mount the file system it will still boot.
Yes. In single user mode you can edit /etc/fstab and comment it the line you added to mount the thumb drive. That should let it boot without freaking out that the USB drive isn’t there.
However, if at any point you ran the script in openHABian to transfer the states to the thumb drive, you have to have it plugged in to boot.
Is that where you move the openhab files from sd to a USB stick if so I have not done that and won’t do this until I replace my sd card for a mechanical Hdd as you recommended the usb stick is purely backup I did exactly what was recommended by @MK-SmartHouse