How to Access the OctoPi Terminal, without SSH, when OctoDash auto-starts.

metasean commented 2 years ago

tldr: I'm feeling like an idiot, but how the heck do I access the OctoPi terminal, without SSH, when OctoDash is successfully auto-starting (which is normally a great thing), and thus taking control of all of the user interface?

I'm feeling like an idiot here, because I'm sure this is something super-simple and well-documented, but for the life of me I'm not seeing how to do it or finding documentation on how to do it. 😩

I successfully installed OctoPi and OctoDash several months ago and, for the most part, I've been really enjoying them! 👍

The one big problem that I have, is that the attached webcam's video is only showing an itty-bitty postage sized image, despite me having it connected to a 7 inch touchscreen. As I understand it, I need to update my config file, which makes perfect sense. 👍

I thought I had set-up SSH when I set-up OctoPi & OctoDash, but when I try to SSH in, I get a port 22: Connection refused error, so apparently I didn't set up SSH. 😞

Next, I grabbed a USB keyboard and connected it to my OctoPi machine, but I have no idea how to get to the terminal now that OctoDash is working. When I boot up, I still see OctoPi doing all of it's start-up procedures, but as soon as it's booted, OctoDash auto-starts, so I can't really access the terminal before OctoDash starts, and I can't figure out how to switch to, or open, the OctoPi's terminal once OctoDash is running, nor can I find anyway to stop OctoDash without also having OctoPi stop. 😫

So, how the heck do I access the OctoPi terminal, without SSH, when OctoDash is successfully auto-starting and taking control of all of the user interface?

jneilliii commented 2 years ago

With keyboard you can use Ctrl+k and or Ctrl+ t. I think the skull icon in custom actions may also do it.

metasean commented 2 years ago

@jneilliii - Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

For anyone else that runs into this issue, I learned a few different things during this adventure.

Stopping OctoDash / Accessing the Terminal

To stop OctoDash, there were two specific things that worked for me:

ctrl-t and then ctrl-k (and sometimes wait a bit wondering if it worked)
adding a [!STOPDASHBOARD] action to OctoDash (silly, not so silly, note —don't use a dark grey or black as the button's color 😉 ), restart OctoDash, and then use your new Stop Dashboard action

`port 22: Connection refused`

If you're getting port 22: Connection refused while trying to SSH into your PI, make sure that you're using the OctoPi IP and NOT the Raspberry Pi IP, i.e.

// NOT this IP
ping raspberrypi.local
ssh your-pi-user-name@raspberrypi.local

// THIS is the correct IP
ping octopi.local
ssh your-pi-user-name@octopi.local

Display resolution

If your webcam video is the size of a postage stamp, or smaller, on a small touchscreen, before messing with the OctoPrint config file, make sure the resolution of the PI display is appropriate.
For details, refer to the following:

UnchartedBull / OctoDash