Trying to update from .9 to .10 made me aware once more of a problem quite everyone knows of here. Several others stumbled into the same issue from what i read:
systems seems to be up but there are some strange logentries about items being NULL
groups don’t seem to work any more
…
You won’t ask what the problem is? Well, i understand …
I’m talking about a feature at the end - well: i was told so. This ugly “feature” running rules before having read the items f.e. (even if you select “44 - delay rules …” in openhabian).
You have a problem after (monthy since a while) an update? Oh, just restart openHAB. And DO NOT CLEAN THE CACHE once more. Doesn’t work? Try again. <\loop>
I had to. Five times. And because i couldn’t believe being send from one appearance of the “feature” to the next, I reinstalled oh 2.5.10 once more. Rebootet an other three times … et voila.
I dislike this feature, not to say i hate that. I really wonder at times what made whomever think this to be an adequate basis for a systemdesign like we see it.
Sorry for ranting, but i am quite p*d of (and i’m not telling full update story, which i started just after kai posted the “released” note … ;-( )
Question at the end: is this feature gone with v3?
This is exceptional, you almost certainly have some underlying problem. Let us know when you’d like help looking into it, probably start a new thread for focused attention.
I have not had the need to clean the cache with openHAB 3 yet, so there may have been a change in that area. I cleaned the cache a lot under 2.5.x it was a pain probably 5% of the time. Most of the time it was smooth, but occasionally something went really wrong and it took multiple cleans and restarts to fix.
3 restarts of openHAB usually fixes most issues, so ignore any errors till that is done.
I also found that a clean and then restarting linux would result in more pain, a clean and then only restart openHAB would be less likely to be painful.
Problems with boot-up sequence interactions have been a plague since OH1 days. Each release changes the exact symptoms a bit - this file gets fatter, that initialization job is improved - but it’s whack-a-mole.
I’ll predict OH3 comes with its own completely different manifestation.
I followed a lot of dicussions about the feature i described above (oh possibly running rules before having read items etc.). I really wonder about why this feature is quite well accepted by most(?) contributors.
3 restarts before a system act “normally” is bad in itself. I know it has been chosen by design. But those who choose this design probably does not run a huge system and/or a low resource HW, (like Rpi)… Otherweise they´ll know, why restarting several times is wrong! It have seen people mention it takes 10-15 minutes each time. That potentionally means the system will be offline for at least 45 minutes.
I sure would like to know if openHAB3 suffer from the same kinda design?
I had also a little problem after the update, but I remembered this was similar to earlier 2.x versions where some of my items were not loaded.
I found a tip in this forum to “touch” the files in the “items” directory, this solved my problems without a further restart or reboot.
If you are on the snapshots there will be a clearing of the cache every time you move to a new build.
I’ve never personally seen this issue when the Things and Items are stored in JSONDB instead of .things and .items files, even on OH 2. I’ve never seen it occur on OH 3 but I’m putting everything (rules too) into JSONDB at this point so probably wouldn’t have seen the problem anyway.
I guess something like 200 man hours have been spent trying to find a solution for it so far. It’s not that it’s acceptable, no one has found an acceptable solution despite trying. As rossko has said, this is a problem that has always existed and many many developers and maintainers have taken a shot at solving the problem.
It’s a work around for a problem/bug that has no other solution right not. It’s not by design. No one chose this approach. No one designed and implemented this. Through trial an error, largely by users here on this forum, the 2-3 restarts was found to work around the problem.
If you do want to do this in OH 2.5, you need to install the Experimental Rules Engine and then a Rules item will appear in the PaperUI Menu. But PaperUI’s rules editor is mostly broken so I can’t recommend it. Though if you want to switch over to JavaScript or Jython or Groovy as your rules language I can’t recommend it enough. But you’ll still want to write your rules in text files. For Jython you can get started at [beta testers wanted!] Jython addon w/ helper libraries (requires OH 2.5.x).
