Openhabian configuration tool documentation

It is called TRUST in the developers to warn if there could be catastrophic consequences.

They already do that the multiple warnings, apparently ignored by some users (you cannot fix that), when installing snapshot builds with OpenHABian.

Thats a whole different situation. Openhabian-config tool is mentioned to be run. Fx to change the password.
Stay on target, and remember my first post, please.

Do we have to say “don’t run rm -rf /” too?

If the instructions don’t say to do something, users are not expected to do it. If users decide to deviate from the instructions how is that our responsibility?

If a user wants to deviate from the provided instructions, it is what users responsibility it research and understand what they are doing. We can only responsible for actions taken following the instructions we provide.

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If you believe most users with limited knowledgde would be running something like that, yes it would be worth mentioning…
But you seem to miss the point in openhabian-config tool is there, its adviced to run it. Menu options are said to be self explained… Well, a menu with “needed” in it would for sure create some attention, dont you think? But nowhere is it mentioned, that this is not needed for automatical installations.
And as I started, there is very limited doc about this tool. Markus advice was to read the source code… I really wonder how come any docs has been done at all then!

Kim
here is a link to the git where you should make a pr if you think a change should be made to the docs. I don’t think anyone would mind if you added a little piece in with a little bit further explanation of each of the options.


obviously you have already found the best source for information about how it works… this forum! and if you need help clarifying what to put in your pr I am sure everybody will pitch in with answer like they have already here in this thread

Well I wouldn´t mind as soon as I know how to…
But I´ll never ever tell anyone to go read the source code to be able to understand whats someting is actually doing… this doesn´t work for users… Developers yes, but not users.

And it’s completely benign. If all those apps are already installed running that command doesn’t do anything.

I understand that now… But would you prefere people coming here asking the same question over and over again, or would it be suitable for a note in the docs?
(I know what I would prefere).

You are welcome to make the change in the docs. It’s pretty easy, all you need is a Github account and a browser.

In the three+ years that openHABian has been released, that menu item has always been there. This is the first thread that has had any questions about it.

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Got both!
Still have to figure how to edit docs though.

Which makes me wonder how come I seem to be the only one notice this. Maybe because I read what it says (and dont say)…

Actually I have wondered about this for quite a long time. Just forgot to ask. I have been running both menu options many times before.
Why I suddenly remembered to ask, was to maybe find a reason how come things are not really working as stable as it should, (I got quite a few random issues which is hard to explain). Then I remembered the openhabian-config tool. Ran the options, and then I start wondering, what exactly these menu´s are good for… When scanning through the doc´s I saw nothing mentioning what these are… Thats the reason for starting this thread!

Grrrr. I replied but my post is gone.

The tl;dr from that post is see How to file an Issue

and both menu choices log out exactly what they are doing. As with openHAB, it’s important to review the logs if you want to know what something does.

Which logfiles do they log to?

To the screen. It doesn’t have to go to a file to be logged. When you exit the screen everything that openhabian-config did, and the result, is there on the console.

Here is the output from running 11.

rich@norns:~   sudo openhabian-config
[sudo] password for rich:
2019-07-22_08:15:07_MDT [openHABian] Checking for root privileges... OK
2019-07-22_08:15:07_MDT [openHABian] Loading configuration file '/etc/openhabian.conf'... OK
grep: /etc/cron.d/firemotd: No such file or directory
/opt/openhabian/functions/openhabian.bash: line 124: firemotd: command not found
2019-07-22_08:15:08_MDT [openHABian] openHABian configuration tool version: [master]v1.4.1-474(174b148)
2019-07-22_08:15:09_MDT [openHABian] Checking for changes in origin... OK
2019-07-22_08:15:16_MDT [openHABian] Installing basic can't-be-wrong packages (screen, vim, ...)...
$ apt-get update
Hit:1 https://deb.nodesource.com/node_8.x stretch InRelease
Ign:2 http://repos.azulsystems.com/debian stable InRelease
Hit:3 http://repos.azulsystems.com/debian stable Release
Get:5 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian stretch InRelease [25.4 kB]
Ign:6 https://dl.bintray.com/openhab/apt-repo2 stable InRelease
Get:7 https://dl.bintray.com/openhab/apt-repo2 stable Release [6,051 B]
Hit:7 https://dl.bintray.com/openhab/apt-repo2 stable Release
Hit:9 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian stretch InRelease
Fetched 25.4 kB in 16s (1,576 B/s)
Reading package lists... Done

$ apt-get -y install screen vim nano mc vfu bash-completion htop curl wget multitail git bzip2 zip unzip xz-utils software-properties-common man-db whiptail acl usbutils dirmngr arping
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
acl is already the newest version (2.2.52-3).
arping is already the newest version (2.14-1).
bash-completion is already the newest version (1:2.1-4.3).
bzip2 is already the newest version (1.0.6-8.1).
curl is already the newest version (7.52.1-5+deb9u9).
dirmngr is already the newest version (2.1.18-8~deb9u4).
git is already the newest version (1:2.11.0-3+deb9u4).
htop is already the newest version (2.0.2-1).
man-db is already the newest version (2.7.6.1-2).
mc is already the newest version (3:4.8.18-1).
multitail is already the newest version (6.4.2-1).
nano is already the newest version (2.7.4-1).
screen is already the newest version (4.5.0-6).
software-properties-common is already the newest version (0.96.20.2-1).
unzip is already the newest version (6.0-21+deb9u1).
usbutils is already the newest version (1:007-4).
vfu is already the newest version (4.10-1.1).
vim is already the newest version (2:8.0.0197-4+deb9u3).
wget is already the newest version (1.18-5+deb9u3).
whiptail is already the newest version (0.52.19-1).
xz-utils is already the newest version (5.2.2-1.2).
zip is already the newest version (3.0-11).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
OK
2019-07-22_08:15:40_MDT [openHABian] Installing additional needed packages...
$ apt-get -y install apt-transport-https bc sysstat avahi-daemon python python-pip avahi-autoipd
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
apt-transport-https is already the newest version (1.4.9).
avahi-autoipd is already the newest version (0.6.32-2).
avahi-daemon is already the newest version (0.6.32-2).
bc is already the newest version (1.06.95-9).
python is already the newest version (2.7.13-2).
sysstat is already the newest version (11.4.3-2).
python-pip is already the newest version (9.0.1-2+rpt2).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
OK
2019-07-22_08:15:43_MDT [openHABian] Installing additional bluetooth packages...
$ apt-get -y install bluez python-bluez python-dev libbluetooth-dev raspberrypi-sys-mods pi-bluetooth
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
python-bluez is already the newest version (0.22-1).
python-dev is already the newest version (2.7.13-2).
bluez is already the newest version (5.43-2+rpt2+deb9u2).
libbluetooth-dev is already the newest version (5.43-2+rpt2+deb9u2).
pi-bluetooth is already the newest version (0.1.10).
raspberrypi-sys-mods is already the newest version (20181127).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
OK
2019-07-22_08:15:53_MDT [openHABian] Checking for default openHABian username:password combination... OK (unknown user)
2019-07-22_08:15:53_MDT [openHABian] We hope you got what you came for! See you again soon ;)
rich@norns:~

Ah sorry… yes, I saw that… Just assumed you meant logging to a file :slight_smile:

And you could do that, if you chose to. OH is very flexible.:wink:

I’m not sure that’s possible in this case actually. openhabian-config isn’t openHAB, it is an ascii based UI which needs access to the command prompt to draw the UI. If you try to redirect the output from openhabian-config, I think you might end up also redirecting the UI itself which wouldn’t work so well.

There might be a way to make it work using tee, but I don’t know how that would actually look.

I dont really need this to log to files. It was just that I got the impression is was already doing so.

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script /bin/bash openhab-config.log would likely work. It would start a shell with all input / output logged to a file.

http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/script.1.html

It might show up somewhere in /var/log. But I think what get’s printed to the command prompt will be the most usable.

But the UI for openhabian-config itself is part of the input/output. When I run that I get:

rich@norns:~   sudo script openhabian-config test.log
[sudo] password for rich:
Script started, file is openhabian-config
[08:53:35] root@norns:/home/rich#

No openhabian-config UI.

But if I run screen test.log and then run sudo openhabian-config then test.log is completely unusable.

Script started on Mon 22 Jul 2019 08:54:58 AM MDT
ESC]0;fish  /home/rich^GESC[30mESC(BESC[mESC[0;34m#ESC[0mESC[0;34m#ESC[0mESC[0;34m#ESC[0mESC[0;34m#ESC[0mESC[0;34m#
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Oops. the fake graphical display. The output is logged in there though. I seem to remember that, for some reason, script uses DOS line endings on the file too. IF you leave off the filename, it makes a file named typescript

EDIT: These hints may strip out those characters.