Copying a global reaction

[Black Cat]

Followers will be aware of the problems I had setting up MSR, so it won;t come as a surprise that now I have problems Upgrading to the latest version. (How much I wish for a "Click to Upgrade" Button.....)
I've been stuck on this for 6 days and am ready to throw in all into the to hard basket, surely HA shouldn't be this problematic?
There, I've said it now I feel better....
So what's the problem, I can upload the file using WINSCP but no matter what I've tried it won't un-tar and over write the existing files in the Reactor Directory.
I receive the following error message which may as well be written in Martian in my case.
Command 'tar -xz --directory="reactor" -f "reactor-0.1-21101-0db64f0-generic.tar.gz"'
failed with return code 2 and error message
tar: reactor: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: reactor: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: reactor/INSTALL.md: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: reactor: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: reactor/LICENSE.md: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: reactor: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
cut for sanity sake....

This goes on for ad infinitum for every file.

I tried with both users, no change, can anyone decipher this and explain why WINSCP won't untar the file?

[toggledbits]

Sounds like you didn't get it right from the get-go... this has the earmarks of a root/sudo install, so all the files have incorrect/inappropriate permissions. Did you maybe do your first install while logged in as "root", or using "sudo"? The instructions are pretty clear that you must not do either of these things.

@black-cat said in Problems with Up grading existing MSR.:

I tried with both users,

And right there are the words that inspire dread...

So, let's start with the basics. SSH into your Pi, preferably as user pi (or whatever non-root user you are trying to be), change directory into your "reactor" directory, and then run the following commands. Post the output here.

id
uname -a
ls -la

[Black Cat]

This post is deleted!

[Black Cat]

Changing to reactor:

msr@BlackCatPi4:~ $ cd reactor
msr@BlackCatPi4:~/reactor $ id
uid=1001(msr) gid=1001(msr) groups=1001(msr)
msr@BlackCatPi4:~/reactor $ uname -a
Linux BlackCatPi4 5.10.17-v7l+ #1403 SMP Mon Feb 22 11:33:35 GMT 2021 armv7l GNU /Linux
msr@BlackCatPi4:~/reactor $ ls -la
total 92
drwxr-xr-x 15 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 12:42 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 msr msr 4096 Apr 20 09:29 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 msr msr 9690 Mar 1 12:57 app.js
-rwx------ 1 msr msr 135 Feb 26 10:33 app.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 msr msr 18 Mar 1 12:57 buildstamp
drwxr-xr-x 2 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 client
drwxr-xr-x 2 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 common
drwxr-x--- 2 msr msr 4096 Apr 16 14:52 config
drwxr-xr-x 4 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 dashboard
drwxr-xr-x 2 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 dist-config
drwxr-xr-x 3 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 docs
-rw-r--r-- 1 msr msr 2912 Feb 26 10:33 INSTALL.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 msr msr 2355 Feb 26 10:33 LICENSE.md
drwxr-x--- 2 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 12:42 local
drwxr-xr-x 2 msr msr 4096 Apr 14 16:59 logs
drwxr-xr-x 84 msr msr 4096 Apr 14 16:36 node_modules
-rw-r--r-- 1 msr msr 992 Feb 26 10:33 package.json
drwxr-xr-x 3 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 reactorui
drwxr-xr-x 4 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 server
drwxr-x--- 6 msr msr 4096 Apr 18 17:13 storage
drwxr-xr-x 2 msr msr 4096 Mar 14 11:04 tools
msr@BlackCatPi4:~/reactor $

[toggledbits]

Looks OK. But maybe you're just not in the right directory when you're doing in the update. Given the command example (tar) you gave earlier, it would not work if you were sitting in the reactor directory at that moment, because that command is making it look for a directory called "reactor" inside the directory called "reactor". I'm wondering where you got that command, because it's not the one that's in the documentation.

Anyway, try this, logged in as user msr:

cd ~msr/reactor
tar xzvf /path/to/the/downloaded/tarfile

Just put in the full path to the downloaded archive after "xzvf" above.

[Black Cat]

I had the tar above the reactor directory, anyway I've moved on and used Midnight Commander to un-tar, reminds me of the old DOS days and Norton Commander (anyone remember that program?), finally having some success.
Still don't know why un-tar wouldn't work in WINSCP or using lynx commands in Putty, but did in MC?
Onto the next problem.....

[CatmanV2]

Wrong folder at a guess, but I recall MC and Norton

C

[PerH]

Thanks for the tip about midnight commander! Didn't use Norton commander, but I did use Xtree Pro on my first PC (XT86 6mhz).

[toggledbits]

I would strongly recommend that you take the time to learn some basic *nix command line and system administration in the background of other work, and I'm addressing the audience in general here, not @Black-Cat or anyone specifically. This will pay huge dividends. You need to be able to successfully navigate the file system (commands cd, pwd, ls, find, rm, mkdir, rmdir, ln, cat, more/less), understand the differences in user permissions and how to manipulate them (commands chmod and chown), compress and uncompress files (commonly gzip and gunzip; there are many others but all operate in a similar way), edit files (you don't have to learn vi, but nano is useful), and update your system (via apt, yum, apk or whatever it uses). This basic knowledge will vastly increase your comfort with other more complex tasks that incorporate these basic tools. Permissions problems, for example, is probably a top 3, if not #1, *nix issue for beginning users, and changing permissions to everything world-read/write is not an answer (in some cases, it will make the problem worse -- ssh itself, for example, is famous for ignoring its own config files when their permissions don't smell right to its nose).

I've been on *nix for decades (I was at Berkeley in the late 70s and early 80s), but remember well the pain of trying to learn the odd foreshortened command names (with their quirky history -- why grep and cd are acronyms but ls is not, and what the heck is cat?), the options for those commands, and of course the editing environment (at 300 baud on a good day). And that's when my brain was young and not addled by age and accretion of useless bits that defy purging to make room for things of greater relevance. I empathize; I really do. But the core of what you need to know is actually pretty small, and if you're going to have these systems in your home, you really need to understand them at a basic level. You also make yourself unsupportable when you rely on tools like MC, Norton, or WinSCP; there's a reason that the installation instructions for almost everything rarely mention these tools and give "bare metal" commands. I'm not saying you're wrong to do it and make your life easier for the most common tasks you do for yourself, that's absolutely fine; but know that you won't get away with not knowing what you really need to know. You will continue to hit roadblocks and be frustrated, and helping you will be more complex and take longer. If the tool has side-effects or behaviors that work differently from the system tools, and you just happen to forget to mention that you're using such a tool, you can create a lot of unnecessary confusion and excess, likely fruitless, labor. If you are going to make these systems an indispensable part of your home, you need to understand them well enough to maintain them.