Run blink1-tiny-server at start up (ubuntu mate / R-pi 2)

[benvickers]

I would like to run the blink1-tiny-server on ubuntu mate (Raspberry Pi) at start up but am having some trouble.

Have tried;

• setting up as .deskstop autostart file
• adding to rc.local

Both as /bin application and to the file path (user/home/blink1/commandline/blink1-tiny-server).

For some reason it never works - which is quite prohibitive to what I am trying to do with the blink.

[todbot]

Hi Ben,

What exact command did you use for your rc.local? I think you should be able to do it with something like:

 nohup blink1-tiny-server -p 8888 > /dev/null 2>&1 &

This assumes 'blink1-tiny-server' is in the path, otherwise put in full path. You may not need 'nohup'.

[benvickers]

Thanks for swift reply! I tried this and seems not to work either.

Something odd seems to be up with doing this on Ubuntu Mate on a Pi. I've actually added blink1-tiny-server to /bin as an executable (I thought this might make it easier to exec).

There seems to be a variant of issues before I even get to the auto start. 1) Running blink1-tiny-server from path without Sudo, starts the server but I get:

{
"uri":  "/blink1/on",
"result":  "blink1 on
on: couldn't find blink1",
"version": "0.94"
}

2) Same issue arises when running it in ref to the /bin command.

It's possible I missing something super basic, I am by no means an expert in any of this and just tinkering around!

[todbot]

Hi Ben, Oh I see, the problem you're having is not you can't get blink1-tiny-server to run but that it can't find any devices without sudo? That's a device permissioning problem and can be fixed with a "udev" rule. Here is a file you can add to your system to enable non-root users to access blink(1) devices (the file has comments on how to install it): https://github.com/todbot/blink1/blob/master/linux/51-blink1.rules

[benvickers]

Hi again! :) I was going to write actually to say that I realised that was what was causing the device missing issue - adding the rules resolved that problem fortunately! But unfortunately I still cannot get it to autostart - either with rc.local or as a .desktop file. Checked chmod stat for all files - have tried various ways and locations for the blink1-tiny-server file itself, still nothing seems to work.

Quite mystified at this point!

Are there any other examples or ways of autostarting the server (or are there other linux servers i might try?) - many thanks in advance!

[todbot]

Hi Ben, Try out this script: https://github.com/todbot/blink1/blob/master/linux/blink1-tiny-server-init.sh To use it, do this in a terminal on your Pi:

sudo cp blink1-tiny-server-init.sh /etc/init.d/blink1-tiny-server
sudo update-rc.d blink1-tiny-server defaults

Then you can check it, start it up and stop it like this:

sudo service blink1-tiny-server status
sudo service blink1-tiny-server start
sudo service blink1-tiny-server stop

And the update-rc.d command above sticks the script in the init script startup area so it'll start up on boot.

Let me know how this works out.

[benvickers]

Amazing thank you so much - it works seamlessly :+1: :)

[todbot]

Oh excellent. I'll close this issue then. Cheers!