Lacking permissions to run pigpio.gpioInitialise();

JoshGElias commented 3 years ago

I've just started learning the Raspberry Pi platform and am struggling to find a good library to interface with GPIO. This one is the most starred by far and seems to have all the features I'll need. Mostly read/write on GPIO and PWM.

I've followed the installation instructions. Ensured that the pigpio daemon is installed on my Pi. However I still get this error whenever I try to initialize pigpio.

2021-01-02 11:37:35 initCheckPermitted: 
+---------------------------------------------------------+
|Sorry, you don't have permission to run this program.    |
|Try running as root, e.g. precede the command with sudo. |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:54
    pigpio.gpioInitialise();
           ^

Error: pigpio error -1 in gpioInitialise
    at initializePigpio (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:54:12)
    at new Gpio (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:158:5)

I've read that I might need to run node as root user? Is this really the case? There must be be a better way to use this library. If that is indeed the only option, how can I do it?

Any help would be appreciated!

JoshGElias commented 3 years ago

I made a symbolic link from my node and npm scripts to the /usr/bin/ directory so that I can run sudo but am still getting the error.

fivdi commented 3 years ago

Duplicate of #114

I made a symbolic link from my node and npm scripts to the /usr/bin/ directory so that I can run sudo but am still getting the error.

The sumbolic links are not needed. Just do the following on the command line:

sudo node your-program-name.js

If this doesn't work please post the complete output of the program.

JoshGElias commented 3 years ago

There's no node script in my usr/bin/ directory so without the symbolic link I can't run sudo node <script>. If I try I get sudo; node; command not found.

The complete output of the program is the following:

pi@raspberrypi:~/Projects/hydro $ sudo node ./build/rgb_led.js 
2021-01-02 11:56:30 initCheckPermitted: 
+---------------------------------------------------------+
|Sorry, you don't have permission to run this program.    |
|Try running as root, e.g. precede the command with sudo. |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:54
    pigpio.gpioInitialise();
           ^

Error: pigpio error -1 in gpioInitialise
    at initializePigpio (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:54:12)
    at new Gpio (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:158:5)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/build/rgb_led.js:14:11)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1063:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1092:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:928:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:769:14)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:72:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47

fivdi commented 3 years ago

Node.js appears to be installed on the system in such a way that user root doesn't have access to the Node.js executable. In such cases what I would do is run the following command:

sudo $(which node) your-program-name.js

Can you remove the symbolic links and give this a try to see if it works?

JoshGElias commented 3 years ago

I'm using nvm to manage my node versions. Although I still had this issue before I used nvm as well. I have removed the symbolic link and tried running my script with node's absolute path, sudo /home/pi/.nvm/versions/node/v14.15.3/bin/node build/rgb_led.js. Still getting the same error though.

pi@raspberrypi:~/Projects/hydro $ sudo /home/pi/.nvm/versions/node/v14.15.3/bin/node build/rgb_led.js 
2021-01-02 14:51:52 initCheckPermitted: 
+---------------------------------------------------------+
|Sorry, you don't have permission to run this program.    |
|Try running as root, e.g. precede the command with sudo. |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:54
    pigpio.gpioInitialise();
           ^

Error: pigpio error -1 in gpioInitialise
    at initializePigpio (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:54:12)
    at new Gpio (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/node_modules/pigpio/pigpio.js:158:5)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/pi/Projects/hydro/build/rgb_led.js:14:11)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1063:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1092:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:928:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:769:14)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:72:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47

I really appreciate you helping me debug this :)

fivdi commented 3 years ago

The error is coming from the pigpio C library rather than the pigpio Node.js module. I'm not sure why it is happening and I can't reproduce the issue locally on a Raspberry Pi.

There error is detected by the pigpio C library here, so there's something different about the file /dev/mem file on your system. What do you see if you run the command ls -l /dev/mem? This is what I see:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ls -l /dev/mem 
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 1, 1 Jan  2 21:09 /dev/mem
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Additional questions:

Is there anything special about your system setup? For example, is Docker being used? Or is it a stock Raspberry Pi OS installation?
Are you sure pigpiod is NOT running on the syetem?

JoshGElias commented 3 years ago

I just needed to chmod -R 755 the bin directory where the node script was installed to allow all users to run it. It's working now! Thank you for the suport @fivdi!

fivdi commented 3 years ago

Good to hear that it's working now 😄 I'll go and close the issue.

Ikfreecharles commented 6 months ago

I just needed to chmod -R 755 the bin directory where the node script was installed to allow all users to run it. It's working now! Thank you for the suport @fivdi!

I'm having the same issue right now. Can you kindly explain what you mean by this? How did you solve the issue?

m66g commented 4 months ago

First of all, @fivdi thank you for your great application! Second, it is highly recommended, not to install or run nodejs with administrator privileges (sudo), but uns nvm instead,

I get the same error as @JoshGElias.

@JoshGElias Please explain what you mean by

I just needed to chmod -R 755 the bin directory where the node script was installed to allow all users to run it. It's working now!

The script is just a js file that is executed. What bin directory where the node script was installed do you mean?

@fivdi Any further hint on the error is of course highly appreciated as well.

Both of you, thank you very much in advance!

Update

for all who have this issue as well: See here https://github.com/fivdi/pigpio/issues/114 -> >Yep, requiring root privileges is a limitation. and here https://forum.ubiquityrobotics.com/t/pigpio-no-permission-to-work/406

fivdi commented 4 months ago

First of all, @fivdi thank you for your great application!

@m66g Thank you and you are welcome 😄. That being said, the functionality is really coming from the pigpio C library. The pigpio Node.js module is just a wrapper for the pigpio C library.

Second, it is highly recommended, not to install or run nodejs with administrator privileges (sudo), but uns nvm instead,

I never install Node.js with administrator privileges (sudo) and never recommended that anyone do this 😄. I almost never run Node.js applications with administrator privileges and don't like doing so when I do it. However, the pigpio C library requires administrator privileges so I don't have a choice when using it.

I get the same error as @JoshGElias.

@JoshGElias Please explain what you mean by

I just needed to chmod -R 755 the bin directory where the node script was installed to allow all users to run it. It's working now!

The script is just a js file that is executed. What bin directory where the node script was installed do you mean?

Although I'm not 100% sure, I would imagine that @JoshGElias means the directory containing the JavaScript file that was run and contains the code using pigpio.

@fivdi Any further hint on the error is of course highly appreciated as well.

If you don't want to use administrator privileges you shouldn't use the Node.js pigpio module.

fivdi / pigpio

Lacking permissions to run pigpio.gpioInitialise(); #124

Update