I’m using a pi3 with Hassio and trying to add some information for a specific sensor to the zwcfg_*.xml file. Using a Mac, i’ve tried updating with text editor, Brackets and SSH into the pi directly, but every time after a restart it deletes my added text and reverts back to the original.
I’ve tried two different pi’s and 2 different microSD cards. I’ve tried stopping Server Management in the configuration tab before editing. I’ve also tried stopping the z-wave network in the Z-wave Network Management config tab.
A thing to keep in mind is that said zwcfg_* file is NOT a config file but a cache, that shouldn’t really be edited manually. You may have luck with your changes getting picked up and persisting if you edited while z-wave was not running, but z-wave may also decide to rewrite anything you edited at any time if it received a contradicting update from a node.
The information stored in the file comes partially directly from interrogating the node in question and partially from the config file associated with that node (there should be a “config” folder somewhere with lots of device-specific files) - that’s where you should make changes if possible and needed; whatever you can’t override from there might not live very long, as z-wave could routinely overwrite it (as a specific example, editing the “manufacturer specific” mode for thermostatic radiator valves into its proper numeric value in zwcfg_* gets overwritten immediately into “invalid index” on every restart no matter how many times you edit it).
In my testing, makeing changes to the device specific files on a normal HA install (i.e. NOT hass.io), does not do anything for devices that have already been discovered and added to the zwave fabric. For those, you have to either remove and re-add the device to your fabric, or stop HA then edit the zwcfg file.
Those of us using hass.io, don’t have the option of tweaking the device specific files.