Openhab2 on Openmediavault - location of configuration files

Setup, Configuration and Use Runtime
1

Hi,
my problem is that Openmediavault does not allow to expose directories on the installation disk using Samba. Therefore I cannot edit the configuration files using Eclipse on my Windows PC.
I tried to work around the problem using symbolic links, but I was not successful with it.
Is there a way to configure openhab2 to read the configuration files from a different location than /etc/openhab2/ ? This would enable me to store the configuration files on a Samba share.

Many thanks for your help,
Burgisch

2

Maybe it’s possible to symlink /etc/openhab2 to another folder?

3

Hi Ude, many thanks for your suggestion.
I tried this, I created the symlinks in an existing and accessible samba share. However I could not manage to access the linked files using samab due to authorization conflicts. I double checked that the files in /etc/openhab2/ do have the same owners and user rights as the other files in the samab share which I can access, however the system seems to protect the files on /etc/. This might be a problem which could be addressed to the Openmediavault comunity.
But is there really no way to configure alternative locations for the configuration files?

Many thanks,
Jörn

4

Yes, that is correct. I thought it the other direction, to create the real files in a samba share and to create the symlink in /etc/openhab2/ :slight_smile:

But of course you also could set up samba to allow following symlinks (this will, however, result in a security issue).

5

Hi Odo, I also tried it the other way around, but it looks like Openhab does not read symlinked directories.
I now installed Virtualbox and I am running openhab in a virtual machine on Openmediavault. This works great, and maybe it is even the better solution as I can play around without the risk of damaging the main system and I can take snapshots very easy.

Thanks for the help,
Burgisch

6

Not sure if this is still relevant but it comes up as first result if searching for openhab, omv and samba. I achieved this by adding a few options to the global extra options for SMB in OMV:

  • follow symlinks = yes
  • wide links = yes
  • unix extensions = no

Step by step:

  • Adding one of my personal users (joe) to the group openhab
  • Creating a folder “openhab” on my shared disk
  • creating two symlinks below it
    • ln -s /var/lib/openhab2 /srv/dev-disk-by-label-XYZ/openhab/userdata
    • ln -s /etc/openhab2 /srv/dev-disk-by-label-XYZ/openhab/conf
  • Adding a shared folder for samba and grant access to joe
  • Add the options above
  • Apply

This comes with a security issue: https://www.samba.org/samba/news/symlink_attack.html

Not an issue for me at all, but it will depend on what you do.