How necessary is Raspberry Stretch for new stable? Topic is solved

[Hobbybob]

I have Domoticz stable running for some time now, and since there is a new stable, I'd like to update.

The first thing mentioned however is that it should be done on a fresh installation of Stretch. I'm running Jessie at the moment, but other than Domoticz I'm also running other things on my Pi (PiVPN for example). I'm not that fond of reinstalling from scratch because it will be quite some work before everything is back in order.

How necessary is the fresh installation? Does the new stable really need Stretch, or will it also run on Jessie? And if it needs Stretch, will a dist-upgrade also work?

[Varazir]

I have been running beta and had to update some time a go and I just did a
dist-upgrade on my Raspberry pi and it has been working so far.

But I can't guarantee it will work for you, recommend to make a backup of your database.

[Hobbybob]

I have been running beta and had to update some time a go and I just did a
dist-upgrade on my Raspberry pi and it has been working so far.

But I can't guarantee it will work for you, recommend to make a backup of your database.

I'm defenitly making a backup, and I think a complete image just to be sure. I understand that there are no guarantees, but it's good to hear it is a possibility.

Thanks for the reply!

[mvzut]

I had problems with the latest stable Domoticz version on Jessie. My Python plugin for Sonos caused Domoticz to crash immediately after starting up.

I created a fresh Stretch installation on a separate SD card, and started installing all my stuff again. I had made backups of all relevant settings/database files from the original installation, which I could easily copy to the new one. If this process would not have worked out as expected, I could immediately revert to the original SD card, so the risk (for family members complaining that the lights won't turn on) was low. But it worked kind of immediately!

I now have a completely fresh system, in under two hours of work. Feels pretty good actually . So I would simply go for it, especially if you have a spare SD card somewhere since this makes the risk very low.

[jake]

The question from the OP is stil not answered. (I also would like to keep my existing OS)

[heggink]

Over the past couple of months, there has been an extensive discussion on a number of crashes largely in the python plugin side caused be library version issues. There was an ultimate solution but no real cause. Fortunately, domoticz now works with python 3.5.3 again but I am not sure how that impacts older os's nor do I think anyone else will.

Unless someone has done it and can prove it works, no guarantees.

Regarding the pi in general, after many years of running different linux boxes, my personal observation is that it's often quite difficult to get one system stable let alone multiple subsystems with conflicting dependencies. Example: when ssl broke python 3.5.3 for the pi/domoticz, reverting back to python 3.4 immediately broke fail2ban. Fail2ban runs fine under 3.4 but only as a manual install and config.

The net: I no longer combine multiple systems on a pi and rather install a different/new pi.

Just a thought!

[EddyG]

I have 3 systems running on Jessie with python 3.4.2
I have almost every python script converted to dzVents.
My TEST system is running on Stretch with python 3.5.3
I can confirm that the lastest stable runs without problems on my Jessie and Stretch systems.

[Hobbybob]

I have 3 systems running on Jessie with python 3.4.2
I have almost every python script converted to dzVents.
My TEST system is running on Stretch with python 3.5.3
I can confirm that the lastest stable runs without problems on my Jessie and Stretch systems.

Great news! I will try to dist-upgrade though I think, just to get up-to-speed with raspbian also. Of course only after making a SD-card-image.