OH2 + Persistance (rrd4j)

I have learned a ton so very quickly and yet i am hardly scratching the surface. I figure since i am new i should use latest which is OH2 but then i ask people and they say they don’t use that version :frowning:

currently i have an esp12 kicking out MQTT temperature data to mosquitto which gives me a nice knob(?) with the temp on OH2 but when i added a graph widget i got the error of no persistance etc…

so i added rrd4j using Paper UI since i do not know it and it looks pretty cool and basic (i may have been wrong on that) but have yet to get it off the ground.
currently i get this error Could not open /var/lib/openhab2/persistence/rrd4j/Temp_Wine.rrd [non existent]
the dir /etc/openhab2/persistence/ just has a readme file in it (keep waiting for a rr4dj file to get generated)
and the file /etc/openhab2/services/rrd4j.cfg is all commented out. the addon.cfg file has persistence = rrd4j

in all this i keep wondering at what point does my mqtt data pipe to persistence? i have nothing about that in items
Number Temp_Wine “Temperature [%.1f F]” {mqtt="<[odroidc1:home/wine/temp:state:default]"}

the file rrd4j.persist had to be touched and edited. copying this stuff got me started in the right direction.