openHABian hassle-free openHAB Setup

@ThomDietrich
Updated the change password method to work with current HEAD commit on master branch.
Nice progress with the dist so far :relaxed:

Do the karaf console keep openhab as username to reflect OH2 documentation?
I would find it nice if it also used openhabian to have same username for all accounts.

Hello all,

I have some questions regarding the unstable/stable branches:

1.) Is it recommended to switch to the unstable release or should one stay at stable? What are your experiences with unstable?
2.) How often is the unstabe branch merged into the stable release?

Background of my question:

I am currently very happy with the stable release but due to https://community.openhab.org/t/keep-getting-endpoint-0-not-found-cannot-set-command-classes-for-z-wave/10882/11I need a new version of the Z-Wave binding.

Thank you for your help,Nico.

1.) Is it recommended to switch to the unstable release or should one stay at stable? What are your experiences with unstable?

Generally speaking stable branches in aspect of Openhab2 is more of a “working” snapshot of linear development. Eg.
close to the stable release more focus was on merging fixes then new features. Newly developed fixes and patches is mainly pushed into 2.1.0 and not to 2.0.x due to effort it takes to cherrypick across all different bindings.

I would therefor recommend unstable releases until you got a setup that works for you. Then keep it until next stable release or a specific improvement that you need like the one you linked to.

2.) How often is the unstabe branch merged into the stable release?

Openhab have historically had long cycles between stable releases.
OH2 is “new” so we will see how it turns out. Creating a stable release for openhab require the effort to focus all maintainers / contributors for a release as there are so many parts, currently 100+. Then the work of all those people need to be reviewed and merged.

@elias_gabrielsson, thank you very much for your helpful and detailed information!!! Kind regards!

This is an answer for @CurtJohn as a continuation of this thread:


Hey Curt,
you are not the first one to get confused about the intended use case of openHABian on a Raspberry Pi. Maybe it helps to not think of the RPi as a PC as we know it. It is not (necessarily) build to be used with a keyboard and display. You already own a powerful PC or Mac which you should benefit from. It would be a shame to have a powerful computer at your fingertips and then have to restrict yourself to a very limited graphical frontend on another device, wouldn’t you agree?

The intended use case of a lot of these small SBCs is to sit in a corner and provide a service reliably 24/7. You’ll find that most solutions for the RPi are characterized by this.

Moving on. What we actually want and what openHABian is aimed for is a dedicated headless system to reliably execute openHAB and to expose all interfaces needed to interact and configure it (PaperUI, BasicUI, HABPanel, openHAB LogViewer, Samba Network Shares, openHABian Configuration Tool, SSH). If you know how to work with these interfaces, you are set for a way better experience than the alternatives. The main challenge is to get used to the Linux command line, not even a GUI (like Pixel) will relieve you from that in the long run. If you are not willing to teach yourself a few fundamental Linux skills you will not become happy with any Linux system and should resort to a e.g. Windows machine. However as you are willing to tinker with smart home technology, I’m sure you are ready to teach yourself new stuff and expand your experience.

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Urgent Notice - Your Help is Needed

If you read this, please execute the Update function in the openHABian Configuration Tool now.
Thank you!


It was brought to our attention that openHABian systems cause requests spikes on remote package update servers. This is a serious problem we were not previously aware of. This unwanted behavior is related to a simple cronjob configuration mistake and the fact that the openHABian user base has grown quite big over the last couple of months.

Every openHABian installation is currently requesting package update information from update servers at 3:03am local time. With hundreds of openHABian installations in certain time zones, these individual requests reach the update servers at nearly the same time, resulting in a DDoS like bombardment of their service.

I have implemented a fix for this issue but have to rely on you, the end users, to apply it.

What to do

  1. Connect to your openHABian system via SSH/console
  2. Execute sudo openhabian-config
  3. Select “Update”
  4. Wait for the update to finish
  5. Execute sudo openhabian-config again
  6. You’ll be asked to apply the fix.

These steps are otherwise harmless to your openHAB/openHABian system.

Because the described problem effects other parties we want to resolve it as soon as possible and urge you to update and apply the patch as soon as possible!

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command not found , pi3 oh2

Are you running openHABian or the stock Rasbpian image on your rPi3?
This thread is for openHABian users and if you are not running it, you are not affected by this issue.

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Thanks for taking the time to make this hassle free setup.

I deploy openhab installations for family and friends, but i am not using any of the boards mentioned above as they are quite expensive and a bit overkill for a console node only, am currently into orange pi which are quite affordable.

there is a whole range of these boards that runs Armbian: in order to provide support for them, am thinking of of two options:

  1. Since the source code for those are available, include them in the supported boards for openhabian or,
  2. Implement a generic installation file (that would include pre-requisites) and other configurations

I currently copying functions of openhabian-setup.sh to create a customized installation script, but it would be nice to have a generic one that would just work on any board (mostly running ubuntu or debian).

what do you guys think?

Hey @mohsh86, I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for, openHABian can be used on almost all debian/ubuntu based systems:

http://docs.openhab.org/installation/openhabian.html#manual-setup

Hi, I did a fresh install of the image on a new sd card today, instead of the splash screen when I log in over SSH I get :
'Every 1.0s: cat /boot/first-boot.log’
and the contents of that log, it finished successfully

Any ideas?

Did you interrupt the setup somehow? The screen you are seeing should only be presented during installation (and can be aborted by pressing Ctrl+C).

Not that I’m aware, anyway to disable it and have the right screen, is there something like a flag to say installation complete?

Yes, it’s called /opt/openHABian-install-inprogress. For more info see: https://github.com/openhab/openhabian/blob/master/includes/bash_profile

Thanks.
Ok so installation should would have been interrupted if ‘openHABian-install-successful’ didn’t exist?
It does and neither openHABian-install-inprogress or install-failed exist
the last line of the log file is: [openHABian] First time boot setup successfully finished.

openHABian-install-successful is of zero bytes length and owned by root

Hey Tom,
I followed the instructions to apply the urgent update. It gave me a list of what looked like repository updates, then seemed to get stuck at a “:” - nothing saying for example applying update…
I left it about half an hour. Eventually I got tired of waiting and closed my putty session. When I went back in to putty, it asked me to continue to apply the update, which seemed encouraging.
But now if I go back in through putty, I get first the normal startup screen, but if I go into openhabian-config I get the “unusual” menu below, which has no way to exit apart from closing down putty.

What to do?

Hey again Tom,
Just after I sent the post above, I had a thought: “what if I shutdown and restart my raspi?” (Believe it or not, I hadn’t tried it that point).
It worked, the openhabian-config menu is back to normal.
Sorry to trouble you!
Great project, I’m really liking this setup.
Andrew

Hi, I tried to use the wifi connection of the raspberry pi 3 but every time I do this, I get an error.
Also when I try to log in, I need to use username: pi and password: raspberry
used image: openhabianpi-raspbian-20170318-git9767b24-crc9616e8a1.img.xz

Wow, So tired of the sequence of downloading openhabian for my PI3, moving the card, running the install over and over again. Can’t get MQTT running. I’m learning but ready to go with a cloud solution because this is very frustrating. Where does one go for trouble shooting?

For the german talking guys:

I’ve wrote a beginners tutorial on how to install Raspbian on a RaspberryPi: https://github.com/codmpm/node-red-contrib-loxone/wiki/Anfänger%3A-Installation-RPi%2C-node-red%2C-nodes

This guide concentrates on installing node-red but could be very well used to get the openhabian image on the SD.

Feedback apreciated.

Cheers,
Patrik