A Mutable Log

A blog by Devendra Tewari

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Run homebridge as a service upon reboot

This post shows how to run homebridge automatically upon reboot using upstart. If you’re using systemd, the default initialization system these days, see Running Homebridge on Bootup (systemd).

Install upstart

sudo apt install upstart

Create configuration file /etc/init/homebridge.conf with

start on stopped rc
stop on shutdown

setuid pi

script
    export HOME="/home/pi"
    export NODE_PATH=$HOME/node_modules/
    exec /usr/local/bin/homebridge
end script

start on stopped rc ensures that avahi-daemon has been started by its SysV init script under /etc/init.d before homebridge is started.

Test the job by running it thus

sudo start homebridge

Use the following command to check the output of the job

sudo tail -f /var/log/upstart/homebridge.log

The following command can be used to verify that homebridge job has been started

sudo initctl list | grep homebridge

To stop the above job

sudo stop homebridge

To run job as a service that will run automatically at boot

sudo service homebridge start

To stop the service forever

sudo service homebridge stop