aaronw

I'm looking for an alternative. I added some more Insteon devices and can no longer access the admin console because UD could never advance beyond their broken Java UI.

I bought an ISY994 to control my home automation system, and for years, the writing regarding the use of Java was on the wall, yet UD could never implement a modern alternative admin console using Javascript. For years, I struggled to run javaws to configure my system, and now I am totally unable to do anything with my system. I can't reconfigure it, and it's not much more than a brick. I am loathe to support UD with their new hardware. As an embedded hardware and developer, I think they made a mistake in making an overpriced Celleron-based box rather than providing just software that could run on existing hardware (i.e. Raspberry Pi). I don't need or want HDMI. I don't need or want 60GB of storage. I just want to manage my Insteon installation. I would just use a generic server if I wanted something more powerful. $400 is way overpriced for this, in my opinion.

To me, this would make the product could be made a lot less expensive. A lot of the products I work on basically are networking appliances, mostly firewalls, 4G/5G head ends, etc. though these are typically much higher end (and not consumer oriented). Right now ARM basically owns the embedded space for devices like this as well as Linux. While there are other processors out there, they make up the minority (i.e. Intel, Risc-V, etc.) I expect Risc-V to make a lot more inroads in the future, but it will take a few years. As far as the GPL is concerned, it should not be an issue unless the product is actively linking against GPL code. Generally this is not an issue. The majority of libraries are typically fully compatible with proprietary software, using LGPL, Apache, MIT, BSD, or numerous other licenses. Some libraries are under multiple licenses and there are some, i.e. Qt, which require buying a commercial license for some features. There's nothing inherently bad about the GPL license as long as you are aware of it and the variations of it. Don't link or include GPL code in your product and you're fine. Using fork/exec with GPL code is generally fine. LGPL code is generally fine as long as you're using dynamic linking (there's rarely a good reason for static linking) unless you're modifying it, in which case you need to be careful but even this is doable. If the modifications add features which depend on proprietary software you may have a problem. In general, however, there's generally no need to make any changes to LGPL code anyway. It's also fairly easy to tell what license various libraries are under. In my Linux distribution if I search on a package it tells me what license that package is under so it's easy to tell if something is under GPL or not. rpm -q -i [package] | grep ^LICENSE will tell me the license it is under, for example. If, for example, I want to know the license of /usr/lib64/libraw.so.20, the following command gives me the information: rpm -q -i `rpm -q -f /usr/lib64/libraw.so.20` | grep ^License Also, for any major functionality on FreeBSD I think it would be difficult to avoid all GPL/LGPL software, especially if a GUI is involved (i.e. via HDMI ports).

I am surprised by a couple of things about this announcement. The first is the choice of going with an Intel Celeron and the second is the choice of FreeBSD. I have been working on embedded systems for over two decades. If it were me, I would choose one of a myriad of 64-bit ARM embedded boards over the Celeron, i.e. a Raspberry Pi, and two I would have gone with Linux over FreeBSD due to the much better support available. For one thing, an ARM board will be a lot less expensive than the Celeron and in the case of boards like the Raspberry Pi, will have very good support. If long term support for a board is required, there are plenty of ARM boards out there which offer it. I have several boards from pine64.com, some which have LTS. Another nice feature with the Raspberry and similar boards is their expansion via "hats". It also allows for an easy method of adding custom hardware via the PI bus. Some boards, like my Rockpro64 board also provide PCI express support. If this is anything like my current (now obsolete) Universal Devices unit, a high speed CPU is not needed and many of the ARM boards are more than capable of handling this. As far as software goes with ARM vs X86, a very large percentage of software is available for both architectures with numerous Linux distributions providing full support for ARM, i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, and more. I had no problem configuring a full desktop environment on my RockPRO64 board running KDE (or whatever other desktop environment one prefers). My experience with the RockPRO board shows it to be extremely capable, with support for 4K video (via HDMI) and plenty of storage with both eMMC AND micro SD and even NVME if the PCIe port is also used. As far as FreeBSD vs Linux, Linux has much wider use, especially in embedded devices. Linux supports a much wider range of hardware than FreeBSD with many vendors actively writing support for Linux (and far fewer writing support for FreeBSD). And if you want to support a GUI or make use of graphical features via the HDMI port then Linux is definitely the way to go. While most of my embedded experience is with headless networking systems, almost all of the customers I have worked with in the past two decades use Linux. I can only think of one customer who uses FreeBSD compared to the dozens I have worked with who run Linux. Linux also has far more compatibility between different chips and platforms than FreeBSD. It will also typically be easier to work with hardware on Linux since Linux drivers and libraries are far more prevalent than FreeBSD. There is also far, far more development on Linux than FreeBSD. When it comes to protocols like Zigbee and Z-Wave, I expect there to be far better support on Linux as well since Linux provides many more consumer oriented features. Any software on FreeBSD will have been ported from Linux anyway. I have worked extensively with embedded Linux for well over a decade, helping to maintain a small minimal distribution my employer provides in their SDK optimized for networking operations. -Aaron Williams

I am having a lot of problems related to the supplied certificates being too weak for TLS. When trying to create a self-signed certificate with a key strength of 2048 bits I get the following error: ert Gen: Retry 0 of 5 java.security.KeyStoreException: Key protection algorithm not found: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:688) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineSetKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:585) at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineSetKeyEntry(KeyStoreDelegator.java:111) at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.setKeyEntry(KeyStore.java:1174) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.generateSelfSignedCertificate(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.access$3(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel$4$1.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:926) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:625) ... 6 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:807) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:896) ... 7 more Caused by: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.jca.GetInstance.getInstance(GetInstance.java:159) at java.base/java.security.Security.getImpl(Security.java:730) at java.base/java.security.AlgorithmParameters.getInstance(AlgorithmParameters.java:158) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:803) ... 8 more Cert Gen: Retry 1 of 5 java.security.KeyStoreException: Key protection algorithm not found: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:688) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineSetKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:585) at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineSetKeyEntry(KeyStoreDelegator.java:111) at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.setKeyEntry(KeyStore.java:1174) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.generateSelfSignedCertificate(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.access$3(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel$4$1.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:926) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:625) ... 6 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:807) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:896) ... 7 more Caused by: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.jca.GetInstance.getInstance(GetInstance.java:159) at java.base/java.security.Security.getImpl(Security.java:730) at java.base/java.security.AlgorithmParameters.getInstance(AlgorithmParameters.java:158) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:803) ... 8 more Cert Gen: Retry 2 of 5 java.security.KeyStoreException: Key protection algorithm not found: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:688) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineSetKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:585) at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineSetKeyEntry(KeyStoreDelegator.java:111) at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.setKeyEntry(KeyStore.java:1174) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.generateSelfSignedCertificate(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.access$3(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel$4$1.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:926) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:625) ... 6 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:807) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:896) ... 7 more Caused by: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.jca.GetInstance.getInstance(GetInstance.java:159) at java.base/java.security.Security.getImpl(Security.java:730) at java.base/java.security.AlgorithmParameters.getInstance(AlgorithmParameters.java:158) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:803) ... 8 more Cert Gen: Retry 3 of 5 java.security.KeyStoreException: Key protection algorithm not found: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:688) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineSetKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:585) at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineSetKeyEntry(KeyStoreDelegator.java:111) at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.setKeyEntry(KeyStore.java:1174) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.generateSelfSignedCertificate(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.access$3(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel$4$1.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:926) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:625) ... 6 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:807) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:896) ... 7 more Caused by: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.jca.GetInstance.getInstance(GetInstance.java:159) at java.base/java.security.Security.getImpl(Security.java:730) at java.base/java.security.AlgorithmParameters.getInstance(AlgorithmParameters.java:158) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:803) ... 8 more Cert Gen: Retry 4 of 5 java.security.KeyStoreException: Key protection algorithm not found: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:688) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineSetKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:585) at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineSetKeyEntry(KeyStoreDelegator.java:111) at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.setKeyEntry(KeyStore.java:1174) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.generateSelfSignedCertificate(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel.access$3(Unknown Source) at com.universaldevices.dashboard.config.CertManagementPanel$4$1.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Encrypt Private Key failed: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:926) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.setKeyEntry(PKCS12KeyStore.java:625) ... 6 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: getPBEAlgorithmParameters failed: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:807) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.encryptPrivateKey(PKCS12KeyStore.java:896) ... 7 more Caused by: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: PBEWithHmacSHA256AndAES_256 AlgorithmParameters not available at java.base/sun.security.jca.GetInstance.getInstance(GetInstance.java:159) at java.base/java.security.Security.getImpl(Security.java:730) at java.base/java.security.AlgorithmParameters.getInstance(AlgorithmParameters.java:158) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.getPBEAlgorithmParameters(PKCS12KeyStore.java:803) ... 8 more I have firmware 5.3.4 installed.