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page	Autostart using systemd	Instructions how to setup Home Assistant to launch on boot using systemd.	2015-9-1 22:57	true	false	true	true	/getting-started/autostart-systemd/

Newer linux distributions are trending towards using systemd for managing daemons. Typically, systems based on Fedora, ArchLinux, 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 >> /etc/systemd/system/home-assistant@.service
[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
After=network.target

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

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

If you've setup Home Assistant in virtualenv following our python installation guide or manual installation guide for raspberry pi, the following template should work for you.

[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=homeassistant
# Make sure the virtualenv Python binary is used
Environment=VIRTUAL_ENV="/srv/homeassistant"
Environment=PATH="$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin:$PATH"
ExecStart=/srv/homeassistant/bin/hass -c "/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If you want to use docker, the following template should work for you.

[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run --name="home-assistant-%i" -v /home/%i/.homeassistant/:/config -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro --net=host homeassistant/home-assistant
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop -t 2 home-assistant-%i
ExecStopPost=/usr/bin/docker rm -f home-assistant-%i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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@[your user] 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 (/etc/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.

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

Because the log can scroll quite quickly, you might want to open a second terminal to view only the errors:

$ journalctl -f -u home-assistant@[your user] | grep -i 'error'