Rule-Trigger "When the system has reached start level 40" not working to deactivate rules during openHAB startup

[Cplant]

@rossko57

I thought I remembered seeing a github story where start level triggering was problematic, so as a stop-gap all rule triggers were treated as though 100, but I find no trace and likely confused something about old files syntax.

Maybe you meant this one.

@rlkoshak

But I agree with @rossko57, even were this to work you likely would not be happy with the reliability of the result.

@rossko57

I do think your whole approach here is doomed though; you’ve no way (even with functional start levels) to ensure some particular rule runs before any other, to disable the others.
You need nothing to happen by default at startup, then actively enable messages later.

You were right: At Startup Level 70, it sometimes worked (e.g. rule ran early enough to disable the other rule early enough), and sometimes didn’t (the first of the x messages got fired). See below the result of 7 identical restarts.

@rossko57

One simple way, have a dummy Switch Item called EnableMessages or something. Make sure it is not included in persistence restore-on-startup, so it always starts as NULL state.
Give it an expire of whatever time you want, to state ON.
Have a startup rule update it to OFF (which starts timing)…
Grotty bit, amend your rules to only send messages when Item ON.

I looked into this, but was a bit reluctant to go for the (from what I understood) dominant option of working with groups that are to be restored on startup). From what I understood, going for this approach would mean that, going forward, I always have to remember to put all new items into this group, to ensure that they’re restored on startup.

Instead, I noticed that a file-based rule might run early enough to deactivate the rule early enough, which is what I’d like to verify. Though I’m struggeling with the Syntax, maybe you can answer two questions:

1. Surprisingly “When System started” (file-based rule) appears to run early enough (though I assume this is the equivalence to “Start Level 100” (UI-based rule), so not sure why this appears to be running early than start Level 100). What would be the syntax to trigger it file-based by different start levels? There appears to be a gap in the documentation, which is why I’m struggeling.
2. What’s the syntax to enable / disable rules in file-based rules? My attempt below was what I thought, but obviously it doesn’t work.

rule "Startup - Disable Rules"
when
    System started
then
    RuleManager.setEnabled(things_status_check, false);
    RuleManager.setEnabled(things_status_notification, false);
    logInfo("notifications", "Rules disabled.");
end