Searching on this site is hopeless.
@rossko57, you are correct. I stumbled across the answer in this comment on a totally unrelated issue from openHAB 1.5. Summary: Just remove the broker host - ignoring the red warning text - and it stops trying.
@jimtng, thanks. I suppose there is no harm in upgrading since I have very little that could be broken.
Meanwhile, I’ve just been ignoring the error and now logging is broken. NOT a problem for this thread. I’ll post a new one. It seems like a legitimate defect.
Update:
pi@pi-home:~ $ sudo apt-get update
...
Fetched 60.0 kB in 2s (26.2 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
pi@pi-home:~ $ sudo apt-get install openhab
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
openhab is already the newest version (3.2.0-1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 31 not upgraded.