Running Dasher on a Raspberry Pi at startup

Running Dasher on Bootup with init.d

If you would like your Pi to start up Dasher automatically on reboot, you will need to install an "init script". This free init script template is a great place to start.

For example, first go to the raw template file and select the whole page and copy it to your clipboard. Then connect to your pi:

ssh pi.local
sudo nano /etc/init.d/dasher 
[paste clipboard contents]

Now you'll need to modify the top of the file. Here's an example:

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: dasher
# Required-Start:    $network $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start daemon at boot time
# Description:       Enable service provided by daemon.
### END INIT INFO

dir="/home/pi/dasher"
cmd="npm run start"
user="root"

This assumes you have installed Dasher to /home/pi/dasher.

Now type CTRL+o to save, then enter, then CTRL+x to exit. Now change the file permissions and "install" the script:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/dasher
sudo update-rc.d dasher defaults

It should now run when your Pi reboots. You can also start it up manually like this:

sudo /etc/init.d/dasher start

To view the running logs, you can tail the output log or error log:

tail -f /var/log/dasher.log
tail -f /var/log/dasher.err

Running Dasher on Bootup with SystemD, example systemd unit file

to create a systemd service, run the following commands:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/dasher.service

• copy and paste the code below - save with CTRL+O.

[Unit]
Description=Dasher
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
#user with access to dasher files
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/dasher
#use command "which npm" to determine correct location of NPM
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/npm run start


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl --system daemon-reload

sudo systemctl enable dasher

sudo systemctl start dasher

The service should be running up now and startup on reboot.

To check if everthing is working correctly use:

sudo journalctl -f -u dasher