habmin in raspberry runs (but slow) and with errors if I want to save something, so that-one I’m not going to use.
openhab-designer on my windows-computer shows perfectly the files on the raspberry but I do not have the root-rights to save the changes. (drive mounted by SFTP Net Drive as user ‘pi’)
I do not know how to login as ‘root’. Anyone?
3th option through PUTTY I need to open all files with sudo so I can save the changes. (not that user-friendly)
getting a bit frustrated 
Found the solution:
sudo chown -hR pi /opt/openhab
Hi sihui
I seem to be suffering the same issues as in this thread.
Using a Raspberry Pi 2 (with fast clock enabled and Ethernet connected to my home network) I started by installing openHAB and getting it up and running by copying the default configuration file openhab_default.cfg and naming it openhab.cfg making the necessary deltas, then hand crafting .sitemap .item and .map files, which I then tried to view via my Win 7 box with Internet explorer 11 (http://openhab.local:8080/openhab.app?sitemap=blahblahblah). It failed. I then tried Chrome (Version 51.0.2704.84 m) and it worked fine. I also tried iOS and Andriod openHAB APPs and they worked (more or less).
Now because I found the hand crafting thing a PITA I wanted to use openHAB Designer to help with the syntax validation etc. and I know this software works as I saw it demoed on YouTube by Kai Kreuzer and Thomas Eichstädt-Engelen on ‘Home Automation for Geeks’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb5q2cvkU-U. Allbeit with iOS on a MAC.
Although I possess a MAC Mini, a Linux Box I wanted to use one of my Win 7 boxes to do the work, mainly for convenience (I am writing a blog post and most of the readers have Windows boxes). So I mapped my Raspberry Pi openHAB install via Samba so I could see it from my Win 7 Box. No issues here.
Then installed the openHAB Developer (basically unzipped it) as I already had Java 1.8.0_92 on Win 7 Box. This Failed.
After some routing round (https://github.com/openhab/openhab/issues/1714), I found I needed the 32bit version of Java so I installed ‘jre-8u92-windows-i586.exe’.
I decided to edit the ‘openHAB-Designer.ini’ file (rather than the shortcut), adding -vm C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_92\bin\javaw.exe. And Bingo it worked!
I followed step 3. of ‘Installing the openHAB designer (optional)’ http://www.openhab.org/getting-started/
Namely;
3.Select the “configurations” folder of your runtime installation in the folder dialog that is shown when selecting the “open folder” toolbar icon.
No issues here. I was able to to view all my files I had created earlier; .sitemap, .item and .map. However, when I tried to use the internal web browser the software would consistently lock. On every occasion I needed to use the Windows Task Manager to kill the thread.
Basically I can’t get the Windows install of openHAB-Designer to work. No matter how hard I try. So I gave up with the Windows version.
Not put off by this I thought I would try to install openHAB-Designer on the Raspberry Pi and use XMing to forward to my Win 7 box and edit from there.
So I installed on the Raspberry Pi (as I have a Pi 2 and I believe this is a 32bit ARM Core I chose the 32bit version of OpenHAB Designer) under ‘/opt/openhab-designer’. As per ‘http://www.openhab.org/getting-started/’
I followed these steps (from the command line on the Pi);
sudo mkdir /opt/openhab-designer
cd /opt/openhab-designer
sudo wget https://bintray.com/artifact/download/openhab/bin/distribution-1.8.3-designer-linux.zip
sudo unzip distribution-1.8.3-designer-linux.zip
Before I start to attempt using XMing I really want to ensure the software fully functions from the Raspberry Pi. However everytime I try to run the software ‘openHAB-Designer’ it fails.
The Raspberry Pi is running ‘2016-03-18-raspbian-jessie’ a pretty recent distro. Besides I always run an apt-get update upgrade to make sure I have the latest.
I’ve tried running from /opt/openhab and nothing works.
An ls - l of /opt/openhab-designer gives
I’ve tried the following command line incantations.
/opt/openhab-designer $ openHAB-Designer
gives
-bash: openHAB-Designer: command not found
/opt/openhab-designer $ ./openHAB-Designer
gives
-bash: openHAB-Designer: cannot execure binary file: Exec format error
/opt/openhab-designer $ sudo openHAB-Designer
gives
sudo: openHAB-Designer: command not found
/opt/openhab-designer $ sudo ./openHAB-Designer
gives
./openHAB-Designer: 1: ./openHAB-Designer: Syntax error: “(” unexpected
.
.
What am I doing wrong?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
SQ
=======================================================
Ahhhh. Update.
Just done some more googling.
See here.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openhab/-Ol42n-USn0
Straight from the horses mouth so to speak. Kai posted on 23/10/2013.
‘The Designer is indeed not meant to be executed on a RaspPi - it should be used on some desktop computer instead. As you correctly figured out, it is build for x86 architectures and has quite a big footprint (just like the Eclipse IDE). My usual suggestion is to simply use a Samba share to access the configuration files on your RaspPi from the Designer; more elegant ways might be offered in future’
Ok.
So my question would be. Why is my PC install of openHAB-Designer not working?
Looks great to me, designer is working!
When I remember correctly, there are some issues with the internal browser. It’s a lot more convenient to use the regular browser, that’s the reason I have never used the internal browser.
Hmmm, what part doesn’t work? How do you access your files, via Samba? Because all what I have read now in your post, it’s working fine …
Here is an example of an smb.conf which works fine at my Win desktop computer:
Good luck.
Hi sihui,
I appreciate the quick response.
Apologies for misleading statement [in mitigation, it was a long email, I was bound to make at least one mistake 
] I meant to say I couldn’t get the full openHAB Designer software working - ie. inclusive of internal browser functionality (when I publish the blog post there will be some whinges if everything is not laid out on a plate). I have in fact been working round the issue by doing exactly what you suggest. I’m using chrome which although can be a bit slow to pick up changes (actually a little on the nondeterministic side at times) works sufficiently well for me to crack on.
More importantly you’ve given me absolution through confirmation.
I kept the pi log in so run a chown as below from time to time and editing things seem to be ok.
sudo chown -vhR pi:pi /etc/openhab
sudo chown -vhR pi:pi /usr/share/openhab
My samba settings are as follows
[pi]
comment= Home Directory
path=/home/pi
browseable=Yes
writeable=Yes
only guest=no
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no
[OpenHAB Home]
comment= OpenHAB Home
path=/usr/share/openhab
browseable=Yes
writeable=Yes
only guest=no
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no
[OpenHAB Config]
comment= OpenHAB Site Config
path=/etc/openhab
browseable=Yes
writeable=Yes
only guest=no
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no
Like you I’m not a Linux Guru, but as my IoT devices, MQTT server, MySQL and openHAB servers are on their own closed network I think security isn’t too much of an issue (for now).
Anyway, thanks for your help
Regards
SQ
Maybe you can avoid that by adding:
force user = openhab
force group = openhab
or pi:pi if you changed the default openHAB user.
Thanks,
I’ll give this a shot.
Regards
Steve
Hi all,
Wasn’t sure whether to revive an old thread here or post a new topic, but I’m having an issue with the designer on Windows 10.
I’ve tried bit the stable version (updated last almost a year ago!) as well as the snapshot but both do not have the editable workspace available. I can browse to my conf files but cannot open any of them.
This happens on my raspberry pi installation as well as a windows installation I did as a test.
In the screenshot above there is a ‘no-entry’ sign attached to the file I’m dragging to the editor.
Any ideas why this is happening?
I went according to the guide at doc.openhab.org/installation/designer.html
Double check your samba conf (lots of examples here in the forum), make sure you have 32Bit Java on your Win installed, make sure you are using designer 0.8 (not the 0.9 version).
Apart from that I have not seen that problem before.
It’s not recommended to use the designer on a Pi. Configure your samba share accordingly and access your files from your Win computer. Much better performance …
Hi @sihui
Still can’t edit any files 
My samba conf I think is ok since I can navigate to the conf directory and edit the files with notepad++.
I uninstalled my 64 bit Java and installed 32 bit
I added the JRE to the PATH and JAVA_HOME environement variables.
4.My designer version is 0.8
So that setup didn’t work. I tried then to install the 64 Bit designer (kept the same Java though)
I’m trying two things here…
First is to open and edit files on my local OH2 installation on my Windows 10 laptop. Can’t edit files.
Second is to access the files on the Pi using samba (to browse to the config folder on the Pi which I can see), but can’t edit files there either.
So both ways aren’t working.
I saw that Zulu Java is the recommended platform now so I thought I would have a go so I installed it on my laptop.
The version installed is: (I didn’t find a 32 bit Windows release)
Now the OH2 runtime doesn’t start with the following output:
I think the path settings are ok since ‘java -version’ returned fine.Is Zulu ok for Windows?
I’m stumped? I would really like to start working with the designer
Edit:
Switching back to Oracle Java allowed the OH2 runtime to kick-off fine.
Designer (64 bit) then threw me this…
Installed Designer 32 bit again and it loads, but again not editable, but no error. So it seems like something to do with my Java installation.
Thanks @sihui, I will follow your steps verbatim and see if there’s any joy. I’ll post any findings.
Good, no problems there I guess.
I can only tell you what I did to make it work:
Win 10 64Bit, installed Java 32Bit from here, installed 32Bit designer 0.8 from here, navigated to the config folder through the samba network share and am able to edit my files.
No need to edit any path or home directories.
Don’t drag them, try double clicking them instead. Dragging doesn’t work for me either.
Good catch, missed that.
Same here 
, never tried that. Double clicking the files always works as expected …
And I never tried double-clicking - and that works 
Well, I just tried dragging in Eclipse (on which the Designer is based) and of course in Eclipse dragging works without any problems.
I have a true love/hate relationship with the Designer and I’m more and more leaning towards hate. It’s such a crippled piece of s… For example, who thought that it was a good idea to remove the option to create a new file? Now I always need to drop to a console window and touch a file. Oh no… refresh also removed, so now I have my file, but the Designer doesn’t see it. I have to reopen the config folder so that Designer refreshes and I can finally start editing my file.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to just use Eclipse and load the openHAB DSL related stuff in it (similar to what you can do for C++, Pyhton, PHP, etc.)?
Does anyone also have a problem editing rules in Designer? I’m using OH2 on Synology chroot debian environment, whenever i edit rules file with Designer, i do have “rules file either empty or cannot be parsed correctly!”. I have this error whenever i use Notepad++ or TextWrangler, but why with Designer?? Everytime i have to vi rules file and :wq without changing anything. Btw i use Designer under OSX.
Also when using
Channel ‘astro:sun:local:set#event’ triggered START
Designer gives an error “no viable alternative at input ‘Channel’”. But it works in OH2.
CTRL-N solves your problem 
Thanks. I had already tried that one before and then it did not work as expected. The problem was that I always picked the ‘Untitled Text File’ (which is selected by default) but then you have the problem that you can’t save it. However, selecting the ‘File’ does the trick.
I’m pretty much convinced that they forgot to rip out the Ctrl-N functionality; they ripped out the Ctrl-S after all
From a usability point of view the Designer really is a disaster…
It needs improvement, yes
Yep, I have those issues too. For the Channel problem, I think that the DSL that is used in Smarthome Designer 0.8 is simply too old and doesn’t have support for it. Maybe Smarthome Designer 0.9 supports it, but i have not tried it yet because it supposedly is still very unstable.
The ‘rule file either empty or cannot be parsed’ problem I see as well. I run the Designer on Ubuntu. The config dir of the running openHAB instance is on a Raspberry Pi 3 and shared via NFS. I read somewhere that this probably causes a timing issue. The idea is that the file is marked updated before the Designer is done writing it and openHAB picks it up too quickly. It does read it after logging that error for as far as I can tell. I never have to vi the rule and save it to touch it again. Instead of opening it in vi and saving it, you could also use the ‘touch <filename>’ command. But I don’t think either is necessary.
It probably would be a good idea if openHAB waited a second before reloading the file after it got notified that the file has been updated.
