New beta6 image released: Release openHABian v1.12.0-beta6 · openhab/openhabian · GitHub
Hotspot issues were fixed, those who had problems with that please re-test.
And we’re back to openJDK!
Please test and provide your feedback here.
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Hi,
I don’t use openhabian but if I did I would find the version number confusing. Why wouldn’t it mirror the version of the openhab it is going to install? Or is there a reason for that?
Because there is almost absolutely no relationship between openHAB, which is the smarthome software, and openHABian, which is the operating system. They have different development cycles. You can use OH without openHABian or run any version of OH on latest openHABian.
Nice!
Is it possible to upgrade a running bookworm based openhabian with this release?
Is it just a normal Debian 12→13 upgrade or are there special upgrade instructions?
Possible maybe, tested no, and recommended not at all.
Debian themselves do NOT recommend to dist-upgrade.
And why? You are much better off to install everything from scratch (which does not even require interaction) so you have a clean system.
You can import your old openHAB config, of course.
This new to me. Debian has clear instructions for Dist-Upgrades!
No, it’s not better, because many configurations are on a smart home setup and not all included in the openhab config.
If I only need an encapsulated openhab, I would choose an openhab docker, not the openhabian Linux distribution!
Assume you are right, why should one use openhabian instead of an openhab docker?
Even that those instructions exist, they are for really expierienced users only, as it is not a simple process.
What do you call a smart home setup ?
I would never ever run anything not belonging to my smart home on my openHAB server(s).
Everything I need can be chosen from the openHABian-config tool.
That something is possible or documented does not mean it’s “recommended”.
Sure, there’s many Debian use cases where this makes sense to avoid efforts to reinstall all existing applications.
But openHABian/openHAB is not any of them.
It’s designed to be your dedicated smart home server.
As I already said, you are way better off to reinstall from scratch and import your config.
Few minutes of work, clean and OH-updated system as a reward.
Almost anything else you might want to be part of your personal smart home ecosystem like MQTT broker, evcc, nodered, knxd, a major database, deCONZ Zigbee driver, homegear HomeMatic gateway, 1wire daemon and a backup system, these you can install from the openhabian-config menu as @hmerk already annotated.
openHABian is an offer. Feel free to take it as is with its principles and benefit, or not and do all the work yourself.
But this thread isn’t for system design principle discussions, and I’m not willing to revive any of them.
Sometimes pre-processing via external tools is necessary e.g. for some inverters data (deye, tigo, etc.) or if you think of RP5 GPIO-Ports, which are as far as i know only accessible via exec commands. All this is configured outside openhab and i want to keep this via dist-upgrade.
…and all of them have some configuration which has to applied after a fresh install.
I greatly appreciate your work, but I am surprised that the usual upgrade process, in my experience, is viewed so critically.
In your opinion, what is wrong with upgrading and thus avoiding the tedious configuration process or reducing it to a few upgrade-related adjustments?
If this is a design decision, there should be a migration path. Otherwise, the effort involved in setting up a new system every time a new release comes out is too high for the reasons mentioned above, isn’t it?
dist-upgrade requires you to be an experienced Linux user.
openHABian isn’t guaranteed to work after any dist-upgrade.
It is known to fail in a substantial number of situations so propability of that to happen to an openHAB(ian) user is high, too.
You can dist-upgrade if you want. It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work.
But there’s no need to dist-upgrade at all. That’s just a deliberate decision of yours.
There’s nothing wrong with continuing to run your existing system.
“dist-upgrade is not supported” just means that we as maintainers of openHABian are not willing to waste our time to support something we don’t see a need for. It just means we won’t be helping you with that by doing testing whatsoever, by documenting the process, or by answering your questions on this forum upfront or when things have gone wrong and you want someone to help you out.
I disagree with that general statement. Either way, clearly that’s 100% our decision as maintainers of and contributors to openHABian, not yours.
And it only applies to openHAB itself. For openHAB there is a migration path, I pointed that out right in my very first reply.
Whatever you want to do outside of openHABian, feel free to. But don’t ask for help here then, thanks.
That’s the point. As far as i understand openhabian is a distribution so there is not only openhab in it. So to some extend the changes outside openhab are changes inside openhabian.
Nevertheless i got your point not support anything else then the openhab part, which is fine. OS upgrade is my part then, which is fine, too. If the additional openhab-stuff works afterwards i am happy at all 
By the way what exactly is the openhabian openhab-special part? It is for setting up an initial openhab configuration, right? But is there any support or tools, which are needed after the initial setup is done?
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what openHABian is. It’s not a Linux distribution.
It’s a set of scripts that ease installing and maintaining an openHAB server, and help to install 3rd party smart home helper software. These scripts don’t replace, but run on top of Debian.
The RPi image just bundles that with Raspi OS for your convenience, but that does not make it a distro. On x86, you’re responsible for installing the OS yourself.
I have to agree with @SebStaeubert, because I miss Grafana and the Influxdb database in the openhab backup, for example. I would hate to lose them, and importing them is not that easy.
Or have I overlooked an option for this?
Well, for me my Backup of 4.3.3 and restore to a 5.1 Beta 5 Image had anything i was looking for, no Data was lost of the Last years, analyzing items Backwards was passible 5.1 the same way it was on 4.3.
The full Backup was even more complete as expected because openhab 5.1 said : ‘i am v 4.3.3’ after restore.
I need to Cache Clean openhab first before my 4.3 full Backup to get the persistent Data in a way that was not fooling v5.1 
Conclusion: a Brand new v5.1 Image can easily restore my Environment including all of my Data from the past years. Openhab restored everything (Things, items, Model, Pages, Rules, Scripts) like a Charm. I was pretty impressed
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I am using Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) and recently switched my installation from Temurin to OpenJDK, based on the release notes stating “we’re back to OpenJDK Java 21 (it’s no longer Temurin)”.
Since then, the following message appears during startup:
Unsupported Linux release
You are running a Linux release that is not officially supported.
We recommend upgrading to the most current stable release of your
distribution (or current Long Term Support version for distributions
that offer LTS).
Is this message expected or intentional in this context, or is it more likely a bug?
The release notes are for the trixie image. They don’t apply to you when you’re still on bookworm so what you get is to be expected.
