I believe I have removed OpenHABian from my Raspberry Pi but when I log in using putty I get the “Welcome to OpenHABian” message.
I installed OpenHAB using apt-get and uninstalled it using:
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove OpenHAB2.
But still I get that message.
Can someone help?
openHABian is just a bunch of scripts that installs and configures apps on a stock Raspbian. While you can remove openhabian-config from your machine, you can’t easily just remove the things that those scripts have already done. That welcome message is one of those configurations that it has done.
If you truly want to roll back everything that openHABian has set up and configured, your best bet will be to start with a fresh install of Raspbian.
NOTE: openHABian is not openHAB. openHABian is a bunch of scripts to install and set up an environment in which to run openHAB. openHAB is the Java program that we all on this forum use to run our home automation. When you ran apt-get purge --auto-remove openHAB2 all you’ve done is uninstall openHAB. You’ve not removed openHABian and you’ve not rolled back anything that openHABian has set up and configured.
Wow, thank you very much. That is the most complete, comprehensive, and understandable response that I have seen in a long time on any forum.
Since I started this thread I did some more investigating and found over 30 places where “openHAB” or “openHABian” appears in various files on my Pi.
I am concerned because I am running this Pi 3B+ at the max. I am fighting for every CPU cycle I can get. That is why I removed openHAB and other things that I don’t need. It bothers me that openHABian left so much “laying around”. I will do the fresh install when it is convenient. But I will be very hesitant to return to openHAB again. I will be exploring other alternatives.
Thanks again for your quality reply.
Just a friendly warning. I recently move to OpenHAB on my Pi 3B+.
The stability and helpfulness leagues above that of HomeAssistant. They break things every release, sometimes releasing patches the same day as release.
I do not know what other products you are considering, but be sure to look closely before you take the leap.
Again, openHAB didn’t leave anything around. openHAB is an application just like any other application. When you do an apt-get purge it removes everything that openHAB the application has installed and/or changed.
openHABian is a set of scripts to set up an RPi (or any other Debian based distro through manual configuration) to be a home automation server based on openHAB. As the docs describe:
The Raspberry Pi and other small single-board computers are quite famous platforms for openHAB. However, setting up a fully working Linux system with all recommended packages and openHAB recommendations is a boring task taking quite some time and Linux newcomers shouldn’t worry about these technical details.
…
openHABian aims to provide a self-configuring Linux system setup specific to the needs of every openHAB user. To that end, the project provides two things:
Notice that last bolded part. When you use openHABian, you are not installing software, you are configuring the entire machine. So no, it doesn’t necessarily play well with other software running on the machine. And yes, it is difficult to back out the changes it makes. It isn’t designed for that kind of deployment. It’s intended to be maybe one or two steps away from a software appliance.
Would you blame Kodi for leaving a bunch of kodi specific stuff laying around on a system if you downloaded a Kodi SD card image to run Kodi then changed your mind? This is basically the same thing.
If you only want to run openHAB or if you only want to try out openHAB, just install openHAB. Only if you want to dedicate an RPi to openHAB and related software, or plan on adding stuff to that machine later but not back out of openHAB then should you use openHABian.
It sounds like you deployed openHABian to a machine already configured to run something else, or you installed openHABian and then decided to give this machine other jobs to do. That is not how openHABian is intended to be used.
Don’t blame openHAB for leaving stuff around. It didn’t. Your misunderstanding of the purpose of openHABian is the root cause of the problem. And there is absolutely nothing that requires you to use openHABian. You can install openHAB using apt, or manually if that’s your thing, just like any other app and it will not make any modifications to the rest of your system.
And… really just how we roll here in the OpenHAB community. This is one of the best forums I’ve participated in as well and I’ve been on the net since the late 90s. The OpenHAB community is second to none. Rich is one of the best and brightest resources we have here! Way to go Rich!
This is worrisome. If you don’t mind me asking, what bindings were you running in your OpenHAB instance. The Pi is one of the recommended platforms for OpenHAB and usually can handle it no problem. Are you running additional services on you Pi?
Well, I will try to cover all the replies. I am not sure openHAB is what I need. I bought a house that has a security system. Door sensors, window sensors, smoke, CO, glass break, etc. I have successfully decoded the communications between the sensors and the hub. That includes detection decoding, and interpreting. I do that with a C program I wrote. It consumes a lot of the CPU and since this was my first C program I am sure that everything I did could have been done better. I am in the process of “doing it better” but I got really board doing that so I thought I’ll just take a shot at doing some trial stuff with openHAB just to break the monotony.
Well, I got my shorts in a ringer trying to create a habpanel and finally concluded I was spending too much time on a task of questionable utility for my purposes.
What I want is a way to know what the state is of all my sensors no matter where I am as long as I have internet. I would also like to trigger a message to my cellphone when certain events occur. A text message would be best but email could work.
Down the road I would like to integrate a doorbell camera and my foscam camera.
I realize that openHAB is geared more toward home automation then security but it is still on my list of potentials. I have an offer from someone who seems to be a RPI/openHAB expert to help me when I am ready.
I was just very frustrated to think that just taking a little diversion resulted in adding things to my Pi that I couldn’t get rid of. I’ll burn a new SD when I’m ready.
Thanks to all.
OpenHAB is capable of all that and so much more!
sounds like we both know why your Pi was falling on it’s face
Come on then… give OpenHAB a fair shot! It can do everything you want (including what your C program does) and run on your little Pi
I totally get that feeling. While I suspect that openHAB can accomplish your goals, I wouldn’t fault you for not wanting to come back to it after a bad first taste. If you do take another shot at it, there are lots of people here to help.
Good luck!
I doubt OpenHAB alone can work with my security system. The sensors do not use WI-FI, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Zigbee or any other common networking method. They require a special piece of hardware to tune to the frequency and a program like mine to detect, decode and interpret the signals.
I am looking for the simplest, cheapest way to message out when certain signals are detected.
MQTT is quickly becoming the lingua franca of DIY IoT messaging. If you update your C program to publish the signals as MQTT messages, you will be able to subscribe to those signals from pretty much any home automation system. There are libraries for C for MQTT.
Given that you haven’t coded in C before, its curious that you chose it for this problem. Python would have been a more popular choice.
But even if you do publish the sensor readings on MQTT, your going to have to configure HABPanel or what ever UI you end up using to visualize the states anyway.
I have seen MQTT mentioned in many places and it looks like a prime candidate. But I still can’t tell if, for example, MQTT messaged OpenHAB about something, could OpenHAB get that information to me on my cellphone outside my local network?
To see the state of my sensors while on my network I use “Mobile SSH” to run my program from my cellphone and trigger a dump of all the sensor states to the screen.
As for Python, when I started this project I started with Python. First time for that language also. I wrote 4 or 5 Python programs to analyze the data streams. But it became apparent that Python was not fast enough so I changed to C. I actually converted a good chunk of code from Python to C.
Yes, you can get messages from openHAB to your cellphone on different ways. Telegramm, Pushbullet, E-Mail are just some to be mentioned.
openHAB is a bridge. It bridges between technologies and protocols allowing one to use devices that use a diverse set of protocols (e.g. MQTT) and technologies (e.g. zwave) can influence reach other and work together.
So what Hans-Jörg is describing is having openHAB react to an MQTT message (implemented using OH rules) by sending an alert message using one of the protocols he mentioned.
One approach not mentioned is the phone apps support receiving notifications through the myopenhab.org service. This service also allows you to access you OH instance’s UI’s remotely.
I am now certain that openHAB will be able to get reports out of my program to outside my network. Either as Hans-Jörg said or as Rich said.
This thread wandered pretty far from the original topic but it was certainly worth it for me and my project.
It provided me with the route I will follow and saved me a lot of research.
Thanks to everyone that took the time to help.
Pete