OH3 using .things files

Setup, Configuration and Use Installation
1

Platform information: Pi4; openhabian; OH3.0.4M

I’m not able to get my .things files to work.

I’m trying to experiment with OH3. Looks very promising and is good that different UI converge. Many thanks to the developers.
I copied my .thing files from OH2.5 to OH3 (which does have a things folder)
I really want to stick to textual fonfiguration. My setup is relatively simple (KNX) and management through text files is what I want to use. I have read many posts about the difference between UI en textfiles and decided I want to stick to text files. Could not find a post on how to solve this.

How do I get OH3 to recognise my .thing files? (and also my .items files)

I would like to suggest that accepting .things files would be the default behaviour of OH3: it will allow pure text file users of OH2 to migrate easier.

Thanks for all input.

2

Put those files in your openHAB items and things folders and they should be recognized…

1 Like
3

It works the same way as in OH2.

4

thanks for the fast reply.
I did just copy the files from one OH to the other but nothing appears to change in the OH3

I started with a new instance of OH3 based on openhabian 1.6.1 (I had to set the debugmode=maximum in order to be able to install correctly) .
After adding the astro binding I got two new things in my inbox, which I could add.
The knx binding I added, allows me to create a knx bridge using the UI but, as mentioned, I prefer to use .things file.
I made a test switch item using the UI and using frontail, which appears to still be running, I can see events when changing the switch.
When copying the files from OH2.5 to OH3 nothing new appears. Neither with the .things or the .items
I copied them to \‘myIPadress’\openHAB-conf\things folder

Any advice on where to start looking?

5

Please check your network share. Folders changed from openhab2 to just openhab.

6

thanks for the reply
I copied from
\‘IP address OH2.5’\openHAB-share\openhab2-conf\things
to
\‘IP address OH3’\openhab-conf\things
The obvious difference being the ‘openHAB-share’ . The folder structure looks identical so I guess something else is not right.

Any more ideas?

7

It looks to me as if the text files are not relaoding in OH3.
fresh install of OH2.5
install bindings through paperUI
copy the .items and .things from old install
update to OH3 using openhabian (I have to set the debugmode=maximum to get it to work)
items and things do display in OH3
updating the .items does not have any effect (I waited 2-3 min but no effect)
reboot the pi4
no update of .items file (as in: the changes made in the .items file is not reflected in OH3)

any ideas?

8

Are the permissions of the files and directories correct ?

9

Hi Wolfgang
I’m not sure I know where to look for the correct settings.
I did run the openhabian “file permission” tool
No luck. Updates of the .times file are still not visible in the OH3 basic UI

10

Just retested different attempts of installing a fresh copy of OH3 but keep hitting the same wall…

11

Above you described that you used the Samba share to copy the .thing files to your Pi.
Can you login via ssh or via desktop and check if you have the files in the right location:

ls -ld /etc/openhab*/things/*things
13

found it! samba was not setup correctly. (thanks to Wolfgang to point me in the right direction)
Using the update routine of openhabian, the samba share was still pointing at the old openhab2 folders.
I located the smb.conf file (etc/samba) and used
sudo nano smb.conf
to edit this file.
all paths referencing to " openhab2 " had to be changed to “openhab”
Now my items and things get populated by the text files and alterations to those files also change my OH3