Popups and error messages during initial startup of openHAB 5.3 snapshot in Windows 10

[jlaur]

When running start.bat I get this popup after a while:

"Den angivne fil blev ikke fundet" translates to something like "The specified file was not found".

I suspect this might be a regression of #1922, since I haven't updated my openHAB development system for a while, and this mentioned "runhidden.vbs" seems to have been added by that PR:

openhab-distro/distributions/openhab/src/main/resources/bin/karaf.bat

Line 107 in b04095e

> "%TEMP%\runhidden.vbs" echo CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run WScript.Arguments(0), 0, False

On second run, the situation changed:

Launching the openHAB runtime...

                           _   _     _     ____
   ___   ___   ___   ___  | | | |   / \   | __ )
  / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ | |_| |  / _ \  |  _ \
 | (_) | (_) |  __/| | | ||  _  | / ___ \ | |_) )
  \___/|  __/ \___/|_| |_||_| |_|/_/   \_\|____/
       |_|       5.3.0-SNAPSHOT - Build #5535

Use '<tab>' for a list of available commands
and '[cmd] --help' for help on a specific command.
To exit, use '<ctrl-d>' or 'logout'.

openhab> Error executing command: Terminal has been closed
openhab>

On one hand, it might have just been a small glitch to be ignored. On the other hand, isn't this message "Error executing command: Terminal has been closed" what should have been fixed by that PR?

[jlaur]

On third run, "openhab> Error executing command: Terminal has been closed" was no longer there.

[andrewfg]

@jlaur your title says OH 4.3 so I nearly overlooked this post.

The "Terminal has been closed" is caused when Karaf is opened in server mode before it has initialized. So the fix starts Karaf in non server mode to do the initialization, waits for that to finish, stops Karaf, and then finally restarts it in server mode. (This explains why you don't see the error again after some restarts). The issue occurs both on fresh installs and after cache clean.

There are two versions of the fix -- namely a '.sh' file for Linux and a '.bat. file for Windows. On the latter it creates runhidden.vbs to execute a script behind the scenes in order do this start, wait, stop, restart process.

Personally I tested this script on Windows 11 English version and I am not sure if your issue is related to the Windows version, a permissions issue, or perhaps even a Danish locale issue.

So can you please check a few things for me?

1. Does the c:\users\jacobl~1\AppData\Local\Temp folder even exist on your machine?
2. Does it contain a runhidden.vbs file?
3. If not, are there any permissions blocks on the temp folder? If it would be a permissions problem then try running start.bat as admin.
4. A final thought may be that you have an over aggressive virus checker that prevents writes to the temp folder. If it would be caused by an AV program then please look at the log from that AV program.
5. Or are you running OH via some kind of VM?

EDIT

6. We should also try to check if the "Den angivne fil blev ikke fundet" is referring to 'runhidden.vbs' itself not being found, or if it means that the target script that 'runhidden.vbs' is trying to run does not exist. e.g. what is the path to the folder where your OH files are located? e.g. does the path have white space in it?

[andrewfg]

I asked an AI and it said two things..

1. In case of point 6. above the error dialog would be different than what you posted.
2. There may be a timing issue where the runhidden.vbs file has not been fully created before it gets called. So can you please test this by adding the timeout /t 1 >nul line in the runtime\bin\karaf.bat file at the position shown below before you run start.bat ?? (As noted above, you need to be doing a clean install, or alternatively delete the userdata\cache` folder (aka clean cache).

set RUNHIDDEN=wscript //nologo "%TEMP%\runhidden.vbs"
> "%TEMP%\runhidden.vbs" echo CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run WScript.Arguments(0), 0, False

timeout /t 1 >nul

echo Starting server...

[jlaur]

After deleting the cache and tmp directories, I'm only getting back to this:

Launching the openHAB runtime...

                           _   _     _     ____
   ___   ___   ___   ___  | | | |   / \   | __ )
  / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ | |_| |  / _ \  |  _ \
 | (_) | (_) |  __/| | | ||  _  | / ___ \ | |_) )
  \___/|  __/ \___/|_| |_||_| |_|/_/   \_\|____/
       |_|       5.3.0-SNAPSHOT - Build #5535

Use '<tab>' for a list of available commands
and '[cmd] --help' for help on a specific command.
To exit, use '<ctrl-d>' or 'logout'.

openhab> Error executing command: Terminal has been closed

but unfortunately not the popup.

For the other questions:

• C:\Users\JACOBL~1\AppData\Local\Temp does exist.
• It does not contain runhidden.vbs, at least not anymore.
• My user has full permissions to this temp directory (as well as administrators, and I'm running start.bat as administrator).
• I'm actually "only" using the stock Windows antivirus, which doesn't seem aggresive (I actually never notice that it's running).
• I do have a space in the path, which is "C:\Users\Jacob Laursen\AppData\Local\Temp" in full.

It's a bit unfortunate that I currently cannot reproduce the original problem with the popup, but only "Terminal has been closed". I might come back to this and try to install 5.1 and then upgrade to 5.2.

[andrewfg]

currently cannot reproduce the original problem with the popup

It does not really matter; your other symptoms tell me that runhidden.vbs isn't running anything.

I think my PR may probably fix your issue. Or at least give a clear indication if it fails. It would be good it you could build oh-distro from my PR to create the zip, and expand the zip into some dummy directory, and run it. There is no need to wait for a new version, you can create it to any dummy folder, and delete it after.

[jlaur]

It would be good it you could build oh-distro from my PR to create the zip, and expand the zip into some dummy directory, and run it. There is no need to wait for a new version, you can create it to any dummy folder, and delete it after.

I tried to just patch karaf.bat directly with your changes in the runtime\bin directory, and add runhidden.vbs as well. I assume this approach is valid as well? Result:

Launching the openHAB runtime...

                           _   _     _     ____
   ___   ___   ___   ___  | | | |   / \   | __ )
  / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ | |_| |  / _ \  |  _ \
 | (_) | (_) |  __/| | | ||  _  | / ___ \ | |_) )
  \___/|  __/ \___/|_| |_||_| |_|/_/   \_\|____/
       |_|       5.3.0-SNAPSHOT - Build #5535

Use '<tab>' for a list of available commands
and '[cmd] --help' for help on a specific command.
To exit, use '<ctrl-d>' or 'logout'.

openhab> �[31mError executing command: �[0m�[31;1mTerminal has been closed�[0m
openhab>

[andrewfg]

assume this approach is valid as well?

Well it should be. But evidently it does not work any better for you than before. I would like to try to find out the reason why. The runhidden missing dialog seems not to be an issue any more. So it looks like the bat file is not even getting as far as calling it. Are you calling start.bat with some arguments? Can you give as much detail as possible about your Windows environment, and how you start the install?

EDIT: PS can you check your user data folder if there is a cache-refresh-lock file? This is there to prevent recursion during start up but should be deleted after a successful run. However due to the error you had with runhidden missing, it may not have been deleted and this causes the cache refresh path never to be taken. So please delete it.

[andrewfg]

PS @jlaur could you please edit the title of this issue?

[jlaur]

EDIT: PS can you check your user data folder if there is a cache-refresh-lock file?

Indeed it was there. After removing it and deleting the cache once again, I now get this popup repeatedly, so back to the original issue:

But the file is there:

("Ejer" is "Owner")

What I'm doing is right-clicking start.bat and running it as administrator. This has something to do with having the openHAB directory located under "Program Files", which might not be the best location for it. 😉 I now tried copying it to another location and running without administrator privileges, but this did not change anything. My next experiment could be running the latest snapshot clean without anything installed/configured.

[jlaur]

My next experiment could be running the latest snapshot clean without anything installed/configured.

Correction, my next experiment became copying it to yet another location without any spaces in it, this seems to have done the trick:

Launching the openHAB runtime...
Refreshing the cache...
Starting server...
Wait timed out
Finalizing startup sequence...

                           _   _     _     ____
   ___   ___   ___   ___  | | | |   / \   | __ )
  / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ | |_| |  / _ \  |  _ \
 | (_) | (_) |  __/| | | ||  _  | / ___ \ | |_) )
  \___/|  __/ \___/|_| |_||_| |_|/_/   \_\|____/
       |_|       5.3.0-SNAPSHOT - Build #5535

Use '<tab>' for a list of available commands
and '[cmd] --help' for help on a specific command.
To exit, use '<ctrl-d>' or 'logout'.

openhab>