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layout	title	description	date	sidebar	comments	sharing	footer
page	Launch Home Assistant on boot	Instructions how to setup Home Assistant to launch on boot on various platforms.	2015-9-1 22:57	false	false	true	true

Upstart Daemon Systemd Daemon OS X Synology NAS

Many linux distributions use the Upstart system (or similar) for managing daemons. Typically, systems based on Debian 7 or previous use Upstart. This includes Ubuntu releases before 15.04. If you are unsure if your system is using Upstart, you may check with the following command:

$ ps -p 1 -o comm=

If the preceding command returns the string init, you are likely using Upstart.

Upstart will launch init scripts that are located in the directory /etc/init.d/. A sample init script for systems using Upstart is maintained by this project.

To install this script, download it, tweak it to you liking, and install it by following the directions in the header. This script will setup Home Assistant to run when the system boots. To start/stop Home Assistant manually, issue the following commands:

$ sudo service hass-daemon start
$ sudo service hass-daemon stop

When running Home Assistant with this script, the configuration directory will be located at /var/opt/homeassistant. This directory will contain a verbose log rather than simply an error log.

When running daemons, it is good practice to have the daemon run under its own user name rather than the default user's name. Instructions for setting this up are outside the scope of this document.

Newer linux distributions are trending towards using systemd for managing daemons. Typically, systems based on Fedora or Debian 8 or later use systemd. This includes Ubuntu releases including and after 15.04, CentOS, and Red Hat. If you are unsure if your system is using `systemd`, you may check with the following command:

$ ps -p 1 -o comm=

If the preceding command returns the string systemd, you are likely using systemd.

If you want Home Assistant to be launched automatically, an extra step is needed to setup systemd. You need a service file to control Home Assistant with systemd. If you are using a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian then replace the [your user] with pi otherwise use your user you want to run Home Assistant. ExecStart contains the path to hass and this may vary. Check with whereis hass for the location.

$ su -c 'cat <<EOF >> /lib/systemd/system/home-assistant@[your user].service
[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=%i
ExecStart=/usr/bin/hass

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF'

There is also another sample service file available. To use this one, just download it.

$ sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/balloob/home-assistant/master/script/home-assistant%40.service -O /lib/systemd/system/home-assistant@[your user].service

You need to reload systemd to make the daemon aware of the new configuration. Enable and launch Home Assistant after that.

$ sudo systemctl --system daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable home-assistant@[your user]
$ sudo systemctl start home-assistant@[your user]

If everything went well, sudo systemctl start home-assistant should give you a positive feedback.

$ sudo systemctl status home-assistant@[your user] -l
● home-assistant@fab.service - Home Assistant for [your user]
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/home-assistant@[your user].service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2016-03-26 12:26:06 CET; 13min ago
 Main PID: 30422 (hass)
   CGroup: /system.slice/system-home\x2dassistant.slice/home-assistant@[your user].service
           ├─30422 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/hass
           └─30426 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/hass
[...]

To get Home Assistant's logging output, simple use journalctl.

$ sudo journalctl -f -u home-assistant@[your user]

Setting up Home Assistant to run as a background service is simple. OS X will start it on boot and make sure it's always running.

To get Home Assistant installed as a background service, run:

$ hass --install-osx

Home Assistant has been installed.         Open it here: http://localhost:8123

Home Assistant will log to ~/Library/Logs/homeassistant.log

To uninstall the service, run:

$ hass --uninstall-osx

Home Assistant has been uninstalled.

To get Home Assistant to automatically start when you boot your Synology NAS:

SSH onto your synology & login as admin or root

$ cd /volume1/homeassistant

Create "homeassistant.conf" file using the following code

# only start this service after the httpd user process has started
start on started httpd-user

# stop the service gracefully if the runlevel changes to 'reboot'
stop on runlevel [06]

# run the scripts as the 'http' user. Running as root (the default) is a bad ide
#setuid admin

# exec the process. Use fully formed path names so that there is no reliance on
# the 'www' file is a node.js script which starts the foobar application.
exec /bin/sh /volume1/homeassistant/hass-daemon start

Register the autostart

$ ln -s homeassistant-conf /etc/init/homeassistant-conf

Make the relevant files executable:

$ chmod -r 777 /etc/init/homeassistant-conf

That's it - reboot your NAS and Home Assistant should automatically start

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