Guys,
With the suggestion of @Brambot I got past the error. But it was not over. Logs indicated several permission issues
Dec 19 00:16:59 raspberrypi karaf[27231]: Unable to update instance pid: /var/lib/openhab2/tmp/instances/instance.properties (Permission denied)
Dec 19 00:19:12 raspberrypi karaf[27642]: 2017-12-19 00:19:12,547 CM Configuration Updater (ManagedService Update: pid=[org.ops4j.pax.logging]) ERROR Cannot access RandomAccessFile java.io.FileNotFoundException: /var/log/openhab2/audit.log (Permission denied) java.io.FileNotFoundException: /var/log/openhab2/audit.log (Permission denied)
Dec 19 00:15:23 raspberrypi karaf[26526]: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /var/lib/openhab2/cache/org.eclipse.osgi/.manager/.fileTableLock (Permission denied)
I really do not know how this has happened honestly. I restored the permissions to openhab for
/var/log/openhab2/audit.log
/var/lib/openhab2/tmp
/var/lib/openhab2/cache
and now everything starts up fine!
Many thanks @Benjy and @Brambot
The support was better than what I get for paid enterprise software 