This was actually the use case that started my journey into HA eeeek years ago with a couple of X10 units since they were cheaper than sunrise lamps!

C

Just bought a new one as well. Looks like it'll probably keep working as long as it doesn't become un-compatible

C

Well after much trepidation, and some additional work, I think we are complete.

After the successful virtualisation of my Home Assistant and Music Server hosts, and a successful POC of the main Vera / MQTT / MSR / everything else box I did some testing with a spare UZB stick to make sure I could connect it to the virtual host.

With a long weekend ahead to solve any issues, this morning I bit the bullet and shut down the hardware device, moved the production UZB stick over to the NAS and spun up the VM.

It was not entirely smooth as for some reason Z-way-server was saying it wasn't connected and AltUI claimed an authentication issue, but with some judicious restarts and testing, everything that I can think of to test now works!

Some of the Z-wave commands from remote controls are a little slow, oddly, but I suspect the network needs to sort itself out as it's nearly two months 'old' Direct control from web interfaces / voice commands seems fine so I'm not overly worried.

So, barring any unforseen failures, I have a fully virtualised system. Better even, when reading about the Synology range, I decided to source an older unit as a backup cluster device so I have some serious resilience

Thanks for all the support an input!

C

For anyone coming on this later, you can't specify ip / port in Z-way server. You need to run socat on the z-way server host as specced here:
https://forum.z-wave.me/viewtopic.php?f=3417&t=32593&p=83558&hilit=socat#p83558

If you're using ser2net you shouldn't need to use socat on the host that's serving the stick

C

Although if I plug my spare stick into the Synology and map it to the VM, it picks it up instantly anyway!

C

Afternoon, all.

In my continued attempts to virtualise my system, I'm in the last (I hope throes)

I don't fancy relying on Synology not to break more USB activities, so decided to set up ser2net on a Raspberry pi and plug in a spare Z-wave.me stick

So on the Raspberry pi: ser2net. yaml

catman@Zwave:/etc $ cat ser2net.yaml
%YAML 1.1
---
# This is a ser2net configuration file, tailored to be rather
# simple.
#
# Find detailed documentation in ser2net.yaml(5)
# A fully featured configuration file is in
# /usr/share/doc/ser2net/examples/ser2net.yaml.gz
# 
# If you find your configuration more useful than this very simple
# one, please submit it as a bugreport

define: &banner \r\nser2net port \p device \d [\B] (Debian GNU/Linux)\r\n\r\n

connection: &zwave0
    # Bind to TCP port
    accepter: tcp,4000
    enable: on
    options:
        kickolduser: true
        # Ensure mDNS is disabled
        mdns: false
    connector: serialdev, /dev/ttyACM0,115200N81,nobreak,local

And if I telnet to it from anywhere:

catman@ChrisMBP15-2018 ~ % telnet 192.168.70.128 4000
Trying 192.168.70.128...
Connected to 192.168.70.128.
Escape character is '^]'.

Which makes me think that ser2net is doing its thing.

Now in my virtualised Z-wave server I have this:

(I've tried with a colon and a space between the ip and the port)

The result:

An unexpected error occurred during loading data. Try to reload the page.
Please check
1.) if the controller is plugged in correctly,
2.) that in the app 'Z-Wave Network Access' the right port is entered
(UZB: '/dev/ttyACM0', RaZberry shield: '/dev/ttyAMA0', UZB-Windows: '\\.\COM3', Z-Stick: '/dev/ttyUSB0', embedded boxes: '/dev/ttyS0' or '/dev/ttyS1')
3.) the app is aktiv. If not you could activate it under Menu > Apps > Active or add a new one under Menu > Apps > Local.
The Setting 'Expert View' needs to be active under Menu > My Settings.

Any pointers as to what I'm doing wrong?

TIA!

C

Thanks. I've got a new 6TB drive coming in a couple of days (I tried an enterprise level disc I had snagged from the office on an off chance, and it was fine) so I've got a 50% uplift on my storage. The two VMs that are running are noticeably snappier on VMs than on Pis, which is nice. Particularly when browsing 9k music tracks, which now takes a couple of seconds rather than the Pi's 20ish

Once the drive upgrade is in place, I'm not quite sure where to go next. Just bite the bullet and try and connect the Zway stick straight into the VM. Try it with a new Zway stick for experimentation, or do something else.

I'm far more comfortable now, though. I have snapshots and OVA images and everything!

C

After a few false starts, some significant progress:

1. Shut down the NUC
2. Insert bootable USB (in my case I went for Debian)
3. Insert USB mounted hard drive
4. Connect monitor, keyboard, mouse
5. Boot into USB
6. Open terminal
7. Confirm your drives (IMPORTANT)
8. dd if=/dev/$original_drive of=/$mountpoint_of_USB_Hardrive/Image.iso
9. Wait (about 45 minutes for me)

Now this is where I found things trickier than I was expecting.
Create a VM in the Synology console, and give it a bootable ISO file to be mounted. I would have used Debian but any graphical interface just wouldn't work. Puppy Debian worked very nicely. Ensure that your virtual disc is larger than the image you created in step 7 above, but leave it empty. I suggest you leave your network disconnected to stop IP conflicts (assuming you have a static IP on your Openluup box)
Plug your USB hard drive with the ISO image into your Synology and in the USB section of your VM connect to that device (another gotcha, if the adapter is USB3 it won't work under USB2 No idea why)
9) Boot into Puppy or your preferred distro.
10) Make sure your ISO file is visible to the OS
11) Check
10) Make sure the USB drive is mounted so the OS can see the
11) Confirm your target drive (less important this time)
12) dd if=/$USB_hard_drive_mount_point/image.iso of=/dev/$virtual_hard_drive_name
13) Wait (about 2 hours this time)
14) Shut down the VM
15) Edit the VM to remove the bootable USB image (and the USB hard drive if preferred)
16) Boot the VM
17) Be a little surprised when it all comes up!
18) Configure the network to your desires, again avoiding IP conflicts
19) Edit the VM to connect to the network

This is where I am. I can see AltUI, MSR, HA bridge on the new VM through a browser. So very very happy at this point!

C

Following on from my last thread, some progress has been made over the weekend.

With 18G of spanky RAM in my Synology DS224+. I've jumped into the murky world of virtualisation and already eliminated the need for two Raspberry Pi's from my system.

Home Assistant: In theory they provide an OVA file which is supported by the Synology. I couldn't get it to work, however, so grabbed a copy of the .img file they supply, renamed it .iso and imported it as a VM. Restored from my full back up and that all seems fantastic.

Minidnla Music server: Trivial. Grabbed a Debian .iso for Bookworm and copied that onto the NAS. Created a new machine which mirrored the specs of the Raspberry Pi, booted from the ISO then did an expert install. Once that was all stable with a basic core of stuff and networking, I've made a copy of that as a good base system. Then fired up minidnla on it, mounted my media and that's also woking. Not bad for a short weekend's work.

Still not sure about the main NUC though. I'm thinking of buying a new USB stick so I can mess around getting it working on the Synology before I do anything drastic.

Once that hurdle is sorted I'm torn between:

1. Using a brand new install of Bookworm, re-installing Z-way server, OpenLuup, AltUI, MSR and HA bridge, then restoring across or
2. Making an ISO of the current system, importing that and upgrading in place (which will be pretty risk free since I can snapshot everything before I make any changes.)

Decisions, decisions.

C

OK here's a useful resource:

The Synology RAM megathread II

With a linked sheet of all results that people have entered.

Despite the thread I originally found, no one has got that particular RAM to work on the sheet. There's another Crucial item:
CCT16G4SFD824A

Which has 10 reports of working in the 224+

Return initiated, new RAM arriving tomorrow. £10 more expensive so £35.

<edit> New RAM in and booted fine. Takes a little longer to come up (I assume it takes a bit longer to check 18G of RAM than 2G I think I'll start another thread about how I'm going to do this.

C

Hmm, I've just tried a 16G stick that was meant to work from Amazon, Crucial. Won't boot.
Also an 8G Transcend stick. Also won't boot.

I'm not missing anything stupid, am I? Power down, remove the drives, clip in the module, re-insert discs and power up?

Just sits there for > 60 seconds with the blue LED blinking.

C

I found thread that showed Crucial was working. £25. Will report back when I've installed it.

The discs are insane as well.

I recall the USB issues. Hmmm.

C

OK got it. I'd still have to migrate from the NUC to some kind of container. A VM might be favourite.

Still have two questions:

1. Are all my Z-wave devices paired to the stick i.e. if I move the stick to another devices, will the devices follow?
2. Can I use the stick on my Synology?

Any thoughts?

Cheers

C

Well, I just ordered 16G of RAM

@therealdb said in RFC: When disaster strikes (sorry it's a bit verbose):

I have a NUC that's running Reactor, Home Assistant, ZwaveJS, a couple of other obscure things, and the storage of those container is backupped every hour, day, week and month.

OK, this is confusing to me. You've got a NUC? But that's running Docker so everything is containerised on the NUC, not the Synology?

C

Sort of 'Ohh, if you want to go there, I wouldn't start from here, if I were you'

Thinking on I've ordered some more RAM for my Synology. Might start migrating some of the easier stuff onto a virtual machine, as Mosquitto, HA Bridge and so on should be easy.

C

Hi everyone. Thanks for all your input recently on the topic of local notifications. I think we got some really interesting solutions

Back to more prosaic matters. Most of you will know that I've been messing around with this stuff for some years. My last major change was when I migrated from Vera, which was something like 4-5 years ago.

While my system has grown, it's not really altered very regularly, although I try to keep most of it kind of up to date.

Current set up:
Intel NUC that runs:
Bare metal install of Debian
Z-way server with Z-wave.me USB stick
Openluup
Altui
Multi system reactor
HA Bridge
Mosquito

Raspberry Pi
Running Home Assistant

About 40 varied Z-wave and Wifi devices

I also have a Synology DS224+ which may inform some responses.

Home Assistant recovery is pretty simple. I get a full backup of the system every night dumped onto my SAN and I know from experience that it would simply be a case of booting up a new install and feeding it the backup.

The NUC on the other hand....
Coming from a commercial IT world, I am becoming more and more conscious that I don't really feel I have a suitable disaster recovery plan, and my core system is running on hardware heading for 10 years old.

My initial thought, which I've kept putting off as it's awkward would be to grab a nice SSD, reboot the NUC into Mint or something similar and simply do a dd copy onto a new drive. I can get a replacement NUC on ebay simply enough, and keep it in a cupboard if anything other than the hard drive fails on the existing one, but this feels rather like a stop gap. However one immediate question:

If I had to use the replacement NUC would all the Z-wave devices simply carry on talking to the stick, or would they all need to be re-paired?

How easy would it be to move everything the NUC does (as a start) onto the NAS? Create a VM and clone the disc onto it?

Should I move to Docker? Something else?

What are the hive mind's thoughts?

Apologies if we've done this before, but while it all just works...

Cheers!

C

Niiiice!

Thanks
C

Interesting, ta. Think I've got an old pi kicking around. OTOH between one Volumio, HA Companion on my phone, and all my Macs talking to me, I think I have enough

C

Only to flick some switches on (or off) I think the only one that might have an issue is the thermostat, but there's a reaction in MSR that handles that, so should be good.

Thanks!

C

And another option! OS X has a 'say' command that does, well, exactly what you'd think.

And it's possible to unmute the output from a command line so ssh to my local macs, run the script and Robert is your father's brother

C